CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES 


CRITIQUES 


AND 


ADDRESSES 


BY 


THOMAS  HENRY  HUXLEY,  LL.D.,  F.R.S, 


NEW  YORK: 
D.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY 

549    &    551    BROADWAY. 
1873. 


ley  is  a  professor  in  several  scientific 
>ois  of  England.  He  was  born  at  3iid- 
cftespx  in  1825,  and  studied  medicine.  In 
1846  he  was  appointed  assistant  surgeon  in  the 
'.  British  navy,  which  he  remain. ed  ti, 1  18 50 
He  became  professor  in  the  School  of  Mines 
in  1854.  His  name  became  prominentrwhfin 
he  was  elected  to  the  London  School  Board 
in  1870.  He  opposed  denominational i  teach- 
in^,  and  fiercely  denounced  the  Koman 
Catholic  Church  m  1871.  He  retired  from  , 
the  board  in  1872,  and  has  given  his  atten- 
'  tion  to  writing  on  natural  sc fences  since. 
His  thecrv  is  in  brief,  that  of  Darwin,  that 
al  the  species  of  animal  life  originated  from 
a  single  germ.  His  protoplasm  is  the  lowest 
1  ..  *  /;u-Q  *>,«  fundamental  living  sub- 


evepytfefcg,  it  is  claimed,  is  made. 

^'2-^? 


PREFACE. 


THE  "Critiques  and  Addresses"  gathered  together  in 
this  volume,  like  the  "  Lay  Sermons,  Addresses,  and 
Reviews,"  published  three  years  ago,  deal  chiefly  with 
educational,  scientific,  and  philosophical  subjects ;  and, 
in  fact,  indicate  the  high- water  mark  of  the  various 
tides  of  occupation  by  which  I  have  been  carried  along 
since  the  beginning  of  the  year  1870. 

In  the  end  of  that  year,  a  confidence  in  my  powers 
of  work,  which,  unfortunately,  has  not  been  justified  by 
events,  led  me  to  allow  myself  •  to  be  brought  forward 
as  a  candidate  for  a  seat  on  the  London  School  Board. 
Thanks  to  the  energy  of  my  supporters  I  was  elected, 
and  took  my  share  in  the  work  of  that  body  during 
the  critical  first  year  of  its  existence.  Then  my  health 
gave  way,  and  I  was  obliged  to  resign  my  place  among 
colleagues  whose  large  practical  knowledge  of  the 
business  of  primary  education,  and  whose  self-sacrificing 
zeal  in  the  discharge  of  the  onerous  and  thankless 
duties  thrown  upon  them  by  the  Legislature,  made  it 


vi  PREFACE. 

a  pleasure  to  work  with  them,  even  though  my  position 
was  usually  that  of  a  member  of  the  minority. 

I  mention  these  circumstances  in  order  to  account  for 
(I  had  almost  said  to  apologize  for)  the  existence  of 
the  two  papers  which  head  the  present  series,  and 
which  are  more  or  less  political,  both  in  the  lower  and 
in  the  higher  senses  of  that  word. 

The  question  of  the  expediency  of  any  form  of 
State  Education  is,  in  fact,  a  question  of  those  higher 
politics  which  lie  above  the  region  in  which  Tories, 
Whigs,  and  Eadicals  "  delight  to  bark  and  bite/'  In 
discussing  it  in  my  address  on  "  Administrative 
Nihilism/'  I  found  myself,  to  my  profound  regret,  led 
to  diverge  very  widely  (though  even  more  perhaps 
in  seeming  than  in  reality)  from  the  opinions  of  a 
man  of  genius  to  whom  I  am  bound  by  the  twofold 
tie  of  the  respect  due  to  a  profound  philosopher  and 
the  affection  given  to  a  very  old  friend.  But  had  I  no 
other  means  of  knowing  the  fact,  the  kindly  geniality  of 
Mr.  Herbert  Spencer's  reply1  assures  me  that  the  tie 
to  which  I  refer  will  bear  a  much  heavier  strain  than 
I  have  put,  or  ever  intend  to  put,  upon  it,  and  I  rather 
rejoice  that  I  have  been  the  means  of  calling  forth 
so  vigorous  a  piece  of  argumentative  writing.  Nor 
is  this  disinterested  joy  at  an  attack  upon  myself 
diminished  by  the  circumstance,  that,  in  all  humility, 
but  in  all  sincerity,  I  think  it  may  be  repulsed. 

Mr.  Spencer  complains  that  I  have  first  misinterpreted, 
and  then  miscalled,  the  doctrine  of  which  he  is  so  able 

1  "Specialized  Administration  ;"  Fortnightly  Review,  December  1871. 


PREFACE.  vii 

an  expositor.  It  would  grieve  me  very  much  if  I 
were  really  open  to  this  charge.  But  what  are  the 
facts  ?  I  define  this  doctrine  as  follows  : — 

"  Those  who  hold  these  views  support  them  by  two  lines  of  argu- 
ment. They  enforce  them  deductively  by  arguing  from  an  assumed 
axiom,  that  the  State  has  no  right  to  do  anything  but  protect  its 
subjects  from  aggression.  The  State  is  simply  a  policeman,  and  its 
duty,  neither  more  nor  less  than  to  prevent  robbery  and  murder  and 
enforce  contracts.  It  is  not  to  promote  good,  nor  even  to  do  any- 
thing to  prevent  evil,  except  by  the  enforcement  of  penalties  upon 
those  who  have  been  guilty  of  obvious  and  tangible  assaults  upon 
purse  or  person.  And,  according  to  this  view,  the  proper  form  of 
government  is  neither  a  monarchy,  an  aristocracy,  nor  a  democracy, 
but  an  asty nomocracy,  or  police  government.  On  the  other  hand, 
these  views  are  supported  d  posteriori  by  an  induction  from  observation, 
which  professes  to  show  that  whatever  is  done  by  a  Government 
beyond  these  negative  limits,  is  not  only  sure  to  be  done  badly,  but 
to  be  done  much  worse  than  private  enterprise  would  have  done  the 
same  thing." 

I  was  filled  with  surprised  regret  when  I  learned 
from  the  conclusion  of  the  article  on  "Specialized 
Administration,"  that  this  statement  is  held  by  Mr. 
Spencer  to  be  a  misinterpretation  of  his  views.  Per- 
haps I  ought  to  be  still  more  sorry  to  be  obliged  to 
declare  myself,  even  now,  unable  to  discover  where  my 
misinterpretation  lies,  or  in  what  respect  my  presenta- 
tion of  Mr.  Spencer's  views  differs  from  his  own  most 
recent  version  of  them.  As  the  passage  cited  above 
shows.  I  have  carefully  defined  the  sense  in  which 
I  use  the  terms  which  I  employ,  and,  therefore,  I 
am  not  greatly  concerned  to  defend  the  abstract 
appropriateness  of  the  terms  themselves.  And  when 


viii  PREFACE. 

Mr.  Spencer  maintains  the  only  proper  functions  of 
Government  to  be  those  which  are  comprehensible  under 
the  description  of  "  Negatively  regulative  control,"  I 
may  suggest  that  the  difference  between  such  "  Nega- 
tive Administration  "  and  "  Administrative  Nihilism,"  in 
the  sense  defined  by  me,  is  not  easily  discernible. 

Having,  as  I  hope,  relieved  myself  from  the  suspicion 
of  having  misunderstood  or  misrepresented  Mr.  Spencer's 
views,  I  might,  if  I  could  forget  that  I  am  writing  a 
preface,  proceed  to  the  discussion  of  the  parallel  which 
he  elaborates,  with  much  knowledge  and  power, 
between  the  physiological  and  the  social  organisms. 
But  this  is  not  the  place  for  a  controversy  involving 
so  many  technicalities,  and  I  content  myself  with  one 
remark,  namely,  that  the  whole  course  of  modern 
physiological  discovery  tends  to  show,  with  more  and 
more  clearness,  that  the  vascular  system,  or  apparatus 
for  distributing  commodities  in  the  animal  organism, 
is  eminently  under  the  control  of  the  cerebro-spinal 
nervous  centres — a  fact  which,  unless  I  am  again 
mistaken,  is  contrary  to  one  of  Mr.  Spencer's  funda- 
mental assumptions.  In  the  animal  organism,  Govern- 
ment does  meddle  with  trade,  and  even  goes  so  far 
as  to  tamper  a  good  deal  with  the  currency. 

In  the  same  number  of  the  Fortnightly  Revieiv  as 
that  which  contains  Mr.  Spencer's  essay,  Miss  Helen 
Taylor  assails  me — though,  I  am  bound  to  admit, 
more  in  sorrow  than  in  anger — for  what  she  terms, 
my  "New  Attack  on  Toleration."  It  is  I,  this  time, 


PREFACE.  ix 

who  may  complain  of  misinterpretation,  if  the  greater 
part  of  Miss  Taylor's  article  (with  which  I  entirely 
sympathise)  is  supposed  to  be  applicable  to  my  "in- 
tolerance." Let  us  have  full  toleration,  by  all  means, 
upon  all  questions  in  which  there  is  room  for  doubt, 
or  which  cannot  be  distinctly  proved  to  affect  the 
welfare  of  mankind.  But  when  Miss  Taylor  has 
shown  what  basis  exists  for  criminal  legislation, 
except  the  clear  right  of  mankind  not  to  tolerate  that 
which  is  demonstrably  contrary  to  the  welfare  of 
society,  I  will  admit  that  such  demonstration  ought 
only  to  be  believed  in  by  the  "  curates  and  old  women  " 
to  whom  she  refers.  Kecent  events  have  not  weakened 
the  conviction  I  expressed  in  a  much-abused  speech 
at  the  London  School  Board,  that  Ultramontanism  is 
demonstrably  the  enemy  of  society ;  and  must  be  met 
with  resistance,  merely  passive  if  possible,  but  active 
if  necessary,  by  "the  whole  power  of  the  State." 

Next  in  order,  it  seems  proper  that  I  should  briefly 
refer  to  my  friend  Mr.  Mivart's  onslaught  upon  my 
criticism  of  Mr.  Darwin's  critics,  himself  among  the 
number,  which  will  be  found  in  this  volume.  In 
"Evolution  and  its  Consequences"1  I  am  accused  of 
misrepresentation,  misquotation,  misunderstanding,  and 
numerous  other  negative  and  positive  literary  and 
scientific  sins;  and  much  subtle  ingenuity  is  expended 
by  Mr.  Mivart  in  attempting  to  extricate  himself 
from  the  position  in  which  my  exposition  of  the  real 

1  Contemporary  Review,  January  1872. 


x  PREFACE. 

opinions  of  Father  Suarez  has  placed  him.  So  much 
more,  in  fact,  has  Mr.  Mivart's  ingenuity  impressed 
me  than  any  other  feature  of  his  reply,  that  I  shall 
take  the  liberty  of  re-stating  the  main  issue  between 
us  ;  and,  for  the  present,  leaving  that  issue  alone  to 
the  judgment  of  the  public. 

In  his  book  on  the  "  Genesis  of  Species  "  Mr.  Mivart, 
after  discussing  the  opinions  of  sundry  Catholic  writers 
of  authority,  among  whom  he  especially  includes  St. 
Augustin,  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  and  the  Jesuit  Suarez, 
proceeds  to  say  :  "  It  is  then  evident  that  ancient 
and  most  venerable  theological  -authorities  distinctly 
assert  derivative  creation,  and  thus  their  teachings 

'  O 

harmonize  with  all  that  modern  science  can  possibly 
require," l  By  the  "  derivative  creation "  of  organic 
forms,  Mr.  Mivart  understands,  "  that  God  created 
them  by  conferring  on  the  material  world  the  power 
to  evolve  them  under  suitable  conditions." 

On  the  contrary,  I  proved  by  evidence,  which  Mr. 
Mivart  does  not  venture  to  impugn,  that  Suarez, 
in  his  "Tractatus  de  Opere  sex  Dierum,"  expressly 
rejects  St.  Augustin's  and  St.  Thomas'  views  ;  that  he 
vehemently  advocates  the  literal  interpretation  of  the 
account  of  the  creation  given  in  the  Book  of  Genesis ; 
and  that  he  treats  with  utter  scorn  the  notion  that 
the  Almighty  could  have  used  the  language  of  that 
Book,  unless  He  meant  it  to  be  taken  literally. 

Mr.  Mivart,  therefore,  either  has  read  Suarez  and 
has  totally  misrepresented  him — a  hypothesis  which,  I 
hope  I  need  hardly  say,  I  do  not  for  a  moment  en? 


PREFACE.  xi 

tertain:  or,  he  lias  got  his  information  at  second 
hand,  and  has  himself  been  deceived.  But  in  that 
case,  it  is  surely  an  imprudence  on  his  part,  to 
reproach  me  with  having  "read  Suarez  ad  hoc,  and 
evidently  without  the  guidance  of  anyone  familiar  with 
that  author."  No  doubt,  in  the  matter  of  guidance, 
Mr.  Mivart  has  the  advantage  of  me.  Nevertheless,  the 
guides  who  supplied  him  with  his  references  to  Suarez' 
"  Metaphysica,"  while  they  left  him  in  ignorance  of  the 
existence  of  the  "  Tractatus/'  are  guides  writh  whose 
services  it  might  be  better  to  dispense;  leaders  who 
wilfully  shut  their  eyes,  being  even  more  liable  to 
lodge  one  in  a  ditch,  than  blind  leaders. 

At  the  time  when  the  essay  on  "  Methods  and  Kesults 
of  Ethnology"  was  written,  I  had  not  met  with  a 
passage  in  Professor  Max  Miiller's  "Last  Kesults  of 
Turanian  Kesearcbes"1  which  shows  so  appositely,  that 
the  profoundest  study  of  philology  leads  to  conclusions 
respecting  the  relation  of  Ethnology  with  Philology, 
similar  to  those  at  which  I  had  arrived  in  approaching 
the  question  from  the  Anatomist's  side,  that  I  cannot 
refrain  from  quoting  it : 

"Nor  should  we,  in  our  phonological  studies,  either  expect  or 
desire  more  than  general  hints  from  physical  ethnology.  The  proper 
and  rational  connection  between  the  two  sciences  is  that  of  mutual 
advice  and  suggestion,  but  nothing  more.  Much  of  the  confusion  of 
terms  and  indistinctness  of  principles,  both  in  Ethnology  and  Phono, 
logy,  are  due  to  the  combined  study  of  these  heterogeneous  sciences. 

Bunsen's  "  Outlines  of  the  Philosophy  of  Universal  History,"  vol.  i. 
p.  349.  1854. 


xii  PEE  FACE. 

Ethnological  race  and  phonological  race  are  not  commensurate,  except 
in  ante-historical  times,  or  perhaps  at  the  very  dawn  of  history. 
With  the  migration  of  tribes,  their  wars,  their  colonies,  their  conquests 
and  alliances,  which,  if  we  may  judge  from  their  effects,  must  have 
been  much  more  violent  in  the  ethnic,  than  even  in  the  political, 
period  of  history,  it  is  impossible  to  imagine  that  race  and  language 
should  continue  to  run  parallel.  The  physiologist  should  pursue  his 
own  science  unconcerned  about  language." 

It  is  further  desirable  to  remark  that  the  statements 
in  this  Essay  respecting  the  forms  of  Native  American 
crania  need  rectification.  On  this  point,  I  refer  the 
reader  who  is  interested  in  the  subject  to  my  paper 
"  On  the  Form  of  the  Cranium  among  the  Patagonians 
and  the  Fuegians"  published  in  the  Journal  of 
Anatomy  and  Physiology  for  1868. 

If  the  problem  discussed  in  my  address  to  the  British 
Association  in  1870  has  not  yet  received  its  solution, 
it  is  not  because  the  champions  of  ^Abiogenesis  have 
been  idle,  or  wanting  in  confidence.  But  every  new 
assertion  on  their  side  has  been  met  by  a  counter 
assertion ;  and  though  the  public  may  have  been  led 
to  believe  that  so  much  noise  must  indicate  rapid 
progress,  one  way  or  the  other,  an  impartial  critic  will 
admit,  with  sorrow,  that  the  question  has  been  "  marking 
time  "  rather  than  marching.  In  mere  sound,  these  two 
processes  are  not  so  very  different. 

LONDON,  April  1873. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

ADMINISTRATIVE  NIHILISM.  (An  Address  delivered  to  the  Members 
of  the  Midland  Institute,  on  the  JHh  of  October,  1871,  and  subse- 
quently published  in  the  Fortnightly  Review) 3 


II. 

THE  SCHOOL  BOARDS  :  WHAT  THEY  CAN  DO,  AND  WHAT  THEY  MAY 

DO.     (The  Contemporary  Review,  1870) 33 


III. 

ON    MEDICAL   EDUCATION.    (An  Address  to  the  Students  of   the 

Faculty  of  Medicine  in  University  College,  London,  1870)     .     .       56 


IV. 

YEAST.    (The  Contemporary  Review,  1871) .     .    .      71 


V. 

Ox  THE  FORMATION  OP  COAL.  (A  Lecture  delivered  before  the 
Members  of  the  Bradford  Philosophical  Institution,  and  subse- 
quently published  in  the  Contemporary  Review) 


vr. 

ON  CORAL  AND  CORAL  KEEFS.    (  Good  Words,  1870) Ill 


xiv  CONTENTS. 

VII. 

PAOB 

ON  THE  METHODS  AND  RESULTS  or  ETHNOLOGY.    (The  Fortnightly 

Review,  1865) 134 


VIII. 

ON  SOME  FIXED  POINTS  IN  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.    (The  Contemporary 

Review,  1871) 167 


IX. 

PALEONTOLOGY  AND  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  EVOLUTION.  (The  Presidential 

Address  to  the  Geological  Society,  1870) 181 


X. 

MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS.     (The  Contemporary  Review,  1871)  ....     218 


XI. 

THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS.  (A  lieview  of  Haeckel's  "  Natiirliche 

Schepfungs-Geschichte."    The  Academy,  1869)      .     .     .         .     .     270 


XII. 

BISHOP  BERKELEY  ON   THE   METAPHYSICS    OF   SENSATION.     (Mac- 

millan's  Magazine,  1871) 287 


CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES. 


I. 

ADMINISTRATIVE  NIHILISM. 

(AN  ADDRESS  TO   THE  MEMBERS  OF  THE  MIDLAND  INSTITUTE, 
OCTOBER  9TH,  1871.) 

To  me,  and,  as  I  trust,  to  the  great  majority  of  those 
whom  I  address,  the  great  attempt  to  educate  the  people 
of  England  which  has  just  been  set  afoot,  is  one  of  the 
most  satisfactory  and  hopeful  events  in  our  modern 
history.  But  it  is  impossible,  even  if  it  were  desirable, 
to  shut  our  eyes  to  the  fact,  that  there  is  a  minority,  not 
inconsiderable  in  numbers,  nor  deficient  in  supporters  of 
weight  and  authority,  in  whose  judgment  all  this  legis- 
lation is  a  step  in  the  wrong  direction,  false  in  principle, 
and  consequently  sure  to  produce  evil  in  practice. 

The  arguments  employed  by  these  objectors  are  of 
two  kinds.  The  first  is  what  I  will  venture  to  term  the 
caste  argument ;  for,  if  logically  carried  out,  it  would 
end  in  the  separation  of  the  people  of  this  country  into 
castes,  as  permanent  and  as  sharply  defined,  if  not  as 
numerous,  as  those  of  India.  It  is  maintained  that  the 
whole  fabric  of  society  will  be  destroyed  if  the  poor,  as 
well  as  the  rich,  are  educated  ;  that  anything  like  sound 
and  good  education  will  only  make  them  discontented 
with  their  station  and  raise  hopes  which,  in  the  great 


4  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [i. 

majority  of  cases,  will  be  bitterly  disappointed.  It  is 
said  :  There  must  be  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of 
water,  scavengers  and  coalheavers,  day  labourers  and 
domestic  servants,  or  the  work  of  society  will  come  to  a 
standstill.  But,  if  you  educate  and  refine  everybody, 
nobody  will  be  content  to  assume  these  functions,  and 
all  the  world  will  want  to  be  gentlemen  and  ladies. 

One  hears  this  argument  most  frequently  from  the 
representatives  of  the  well-to-do  middle  class ;  and, 
coming  from  them,  it  strikes  me  as  peculiarly  incon- 
sistent, as  the  one  thing  they  admire,  strive  after,  and 
advise  their  own  children  to  do,  is  to  get  on  in  the  world, 
and,  if  possible,  rise  out  of  the  class  in  which  they  were 
born  into  that  above  them.  Society  needs  grocers  and 
merchants  as  much  as  it  needs  coalheavers ;  but  if  a 
merchant  accumulates  wealth  and  works  his  way  to  a 
baronetcy,  or  if  the  son  of  a  greengrocer  becomes  a  lord 
chancellor,  or  an  archbishop,  or,  as  a  successful  soldier, 
wins  a  peerage,  all  the  world  admires  them  ;  and  looks 
with  pride  upon  the  social  system  which  renders  such 
achievements  possible.  Nobody  suggests  that  there  is 
anything  wrong  in  their  being  discontented  with  their 
station ;  or  that,  in  their  cases  society  suffers  by  men  of 
ability  reaching  the  positions  for  which  nature  has 
fitted  them. 

But  there  are  better  replies  than  those  of  the  tu  quoque 
sort  to  the  caste  argument.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  not 
true  that  education,  as  such,  unfits  men  for  rough  and 
laborious,  or  even  disgusting,  occupations.  The  life  of  a 
sailor  is  rougher  and  harder  than  that  of  nine  landsmen 
out  of  ten,  and  yet,  as  every  ship's  captain  knows,  no 
sailor  was  ever  the  worse  for  possessing  a  trained 
intelligence.  The  life  of  a  medical  practitioner,  es- 
pecially in  the  country,  is  harder  and  more  laborious 
than  that  of  most  artisans,  and  he  is  constantly  obliged 


I.]  ADMINISTRATIVE  N. 

"^^fc^        '     —          ^      ^W      ^    ^^^^" 

to  do  things  which,  in  point  of  pleasanuTe&a,  taflfiot  be 
ranked  above  scavengering — yet  he  always  ought  to  be, 
and  he  frequently  is,  a  highly  educated  man.  In  the 
second  place,  though  it  may  be  granted  that  the  words 
of  the  catechism,  which  require  a  man  to  do  his  duty  in 
the  station  to  which  it  has  pleased  God  to  call  him,  give 
an  admirable  definition  of  our  obligation  to  ourselves 
and  to  society ;  yet  the  question  remains,  how  is  any 
given  person  to  find  out  what  is  the  particular  station 
to  which  it  has  pleased  God  to  call  him  ?  A  new-born 
infant  does  not  come  into  the  world  labelled  scavenger, 
shopkeeper,  bishop,  or  duke.  One  mass  of  red  pulp  is 
just  like  another  to  all  outward  appearance.  And  it  is 
only  by  finding  out  what  his  faculties  are  good  for,  and 
seeking,  not  for  the  sake  of  gratifying  a  paltry  vanity, 
but  as  the  highest  duty  to  himself  and  to  his  fellow-men, 
to  put  himself  into  the  position  in  which  they  can  attain 
their  full  development,  that  the  man  discovers  his  true 
station.  That  which  is  to  be  lamented,  I  fancy,  is  not 
that  society  should  do  its  utmost  to  help  capacity  to 
ascend  from  the  lower  strata  to  the  higher,  but  that  it 
has  no  machinery  by  which  to  facilitate  the  descent  of 
incapacity  from  the  higher  strata  to  the  lower.  In  that 
noble  romance,  the  "  Eepublic  "  (which  is  now,  thanks  to 
the  Master  of  Balliol,  as  intelligible  to  us  all,  as  if  it 
had  been  written  in  our  mother  tongue),  Plato  makes 
Socrates  say  that  he  should  like  to  inculcate  upon  the 
citizens  of  his  ideal  state  just  one  "  royal  lie." 

"c  Citizens/  we  shall  say  to  them  in  our  tale—*  You  are  brothers, 
yet  God  has  framed  you  differently.  Some  of  you  have  the  power  of 
command,  and  these  he  has  composed  of  gold,  wherefore  also  they 
have  the  greatest  honour  ;  others  of  silver,  to  be  auxiliaries  ;  others 
again,  who  are  to  be  husbandmen  and  craftsmen,  he  has  made  of  brass 
and  iron  ;  and  the  species  will  generally  be  preserved  in  the  children. 
But  as  you  are  of  the  same  original  family,  a  golden  parent  will  some- 
times have  a  silver  sou,  or  a  silver  parent  a  golden  sou.  And  God 


6  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [i. 

proclaims  to  the  rulers,  as  a  first  principle,  that  before  all  they  should 
watch  over  their  offspring,  and  see  what  elements  mingle  with  their 
nature  ;  for  if  the  son  of  a  golden  or  silver  parent  has  an  admixture  of 
brass  and  iron,  then  nature  orders  a  transposition  of  ranks,  and  the 
eye  of  the  ruler  must  not  be  pitiful  towards  his  child  because  he  has 
to  descend  in  the  scale  and  become  a  husbandman  or  artisan  ;  just  as 
there  may  be  others  sprung  from  the  artisan  class,  who  are  raised  to 
honour,  and  become  guardians  and  auxiliaries.  For  an  oracle  says  that 
when  a  man  of  brass  or  iron  guards  the  State,  it  will  then  be 
destroyed.' " l 

Time,  whose  tooth  gnaws  away  everything  else,  is 
powerless  against  truth ;  and  the  lapse  of  more  than  two 
thousand  years  has  not  weakened  the  force  of  these  wise 
words.  Nor  is  it  necessary  that,  as  Plato  suggests, 
society  should  provide  functionaries  expressly  charged 
with  the  performance  of  the  difficult  duty  of  picking  out 
the  men  of  brass  from  those  of  silver  and  gold.  Educate, 
and  the  latter  will  certainly  rise  to  the  top ;  remove  all 
those  artificial  props  by  which  the  brass  and  iron  folk 
are  kept  at  the  top,  and,  by  a  law  as  sure  as  that  of 
gravitation,  they  will  gradually  sink  to  the  bottom.  We 
have  all  known  noble  lords  who  would  have  been  coach- 
men, or  gamekeepers,  or  billiard-markers,  if  they  had 
not  been  kept  afloat  by  our  social  corks ;  we  have  all 
known  men  among  the  lowest  ranks,  of  whom  every- 
one has  said,  "  What  might  not  that  man  have  become, 
if  he  had  only  had  a  little  education  ?  " 

And  who  that  attends,  even  in  the  most  superficial 
way,  to  the  conditions  upon  which  the  stability  of 
modern  society — and  especially  of  a  society  like  ours,  in 
which  recent  legislation  has  placed  sovereign  authority 
in  the  hands  of  the  masses,  whenever  they  are  united 
enough  to  wield  their  power — can  doubt  that  every  man 
of  high  natural  ability,  who  is  both  ignorant  and  miser- 

1  "  The  Dialogues  of  Plato."  Translated  into  English,  with  Analysis  and  Intro- 
duction, by  B.  Jowett,  M.A.  Vol.  ii.  p.  243. 


i.]  ADMINISTRATIVE  NIHILISM.  7 

able,  is  as  great  a  danger  to  society  as  a  rocket  without  a 
stick  is  to  the  people  who  fire  it  ?  Misery  is  a  match  that 
never  goes  out ;  genius,  as  an  explosive  power,  beats  gun- 
powder hollow ;  and  if  knowledge,  which  should  give 
that  power  guidance,  is  wanting,  the  chances  are  not 
small  that  the  rocket  will  simply  run  a-muck  among 
friends  and  foes.  What  gives  force  to  the  socialistic 
movement  which  is  now  stirring  European  society  to  its 
depths,  but  a  determination  on  the  part  of  the  naturally 
able  men  among  the  proletariat,  to  put  an  end,  somehow 
or  other,  to  the  misery  and  degradation  in  which  a  large 
proportion  of  their  fellows  are  steeped  ?  The  question, 
whether  the  means  by  which  they  purpose  to  achieve 
this  end  are  adequate  or  not,  is  at  this  moment  the  most 
important  of  all  political  questions — and  it  is  beside  my 
present  purpose  to  discuss  it.  All  I  desire  to  point  out 
is,  that  if  the  chance  of  the  controversy  being  decided 
calmly  and  rationally,  and  not  by  passion  and  force, 
looks  miserably  small  to  an  impartial  bystander,  the 
reason  is  that  not  one  in  ten  thousand  of  those  who 
constitute  the  ultimate  court  of  appeal,  by  which  ques- 
tions of  the  utmost  difficulty,  as  well  as  of  the  most 
momentous  gravity,  will  have  to  be  decided,  is  prepared 
by  education  to  comprehend  the  real  nature  of  the  suit 
brought  before  their  tribunal. 

Finally,  as  to  the  ladies  and  gentlemen  question,  all  I 
can  say  is,  would  that  every  woman-child  born  into  this 
world  were  trained  to  be  a  lady,  and  every  man-child  a 
gentleman!  But  then  I  do  not  use  those  much-abused 
words  by  way  of  distinguishing  people  who  wear  fine 
clothes,  and  live  in  fine  houses,  and  talk  aristocratic 
slang,  from  those  who  go  about  in  fustian,  and  live  in 
back  slums,  and  talk  gutter  slang.  Some  inborn  plebeian 
blindness,  in  fact,  prevents  me  from  understanding  what 
advantage  the  former  have  over  the  latter.  I  have  never 


8  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [i. 

even  been  able  to  understand  why  pigeon-shooting  at 
Hurlingham  should  be  refined  and  polite,  while  a  rat- 
killing  match  in  Whitcchapel  is  low  ;  or  why  "  What  a 
lark "  should  be  coarse,  when  one  hears  "  How  awfully 
jolly"  drop  from  the  most  refined  lips  twenty  times  in 


an  evening. 


Thoughtfulness  for  others,  generosity,  modesty,  and 
self-respect,  are  the  qualities  which  make  a  real  gentle- 
man, or  lady,  as  distinguished  from  the  veneered  article 
which  commonly  goes  by  that  name.  I  by  no  means 
wish  to  express  any  sentimental  preference  for  Lazarus 
against  Dives,  but,  on  the  face  of  the  matter,  one  does 
not  see  why  the  practice  of  these  virtues  should  be  more 
difficult  in  one  state  of  life  than  another  ;  and  any  one 
who  has  had  a  wide  experience  among  all  sorts  and  con- 
ditions of  men,  will,  I  think,  agree  with  me  that  they  are 
as  common  in  the  lower  ranks  of  life  as  in  the  higher. 

Leaving  the  caste  argument  aside  then,  as  inconsist- 
ent with  the  practice  of  those  who  employ  it,  as  devoid 
of  any  justification  in  theory,  and  as  utterly  mischievous 
if  its  logical  consequences  were  carried  out,  let  us  turn 
to  the  other  class  of  objectors.  To  these  opponents,  the 
Education  Act  is  only  one  of  a  number  of  pieces  of 
legislation  to  which  they  object  on  principle  ;  and  they 
include  under  like  condemnation  the  Vaccination  Act, 
the  Contagious  Diseases  Act,  and  all  other  sanitary  Acts ; 
all  attempts  on  the  part  of  the  State  to  prevent  adultera- 
tion, or  to  regulate  injurious  trades ;  all  legislative 
interference  with  anything  that  bears  directly  or  in- 
directly on  commerce,  such  as  shipping,  harbours,  rail- 
ways, roads,  cab-fares,  and  the  carriage  of  letters  ;  and 
all  attempts  to  promote  the  spread  of  knowledge  by  the 
establishment  of  teaching  bodies,  examining  bodies, 
libraries,  or  museums,  or  by  the  sending  out  of  scientific 
expeditions ;  all  endeavours  to  advance  art  by  the 


I]  ADMINISTRATIVE  NIHILISM.  9 

establishment  of  schools  of  design,  or  picture  galleries ; 
or  by  spending  money  upon  an  architectural  public 
building  when  a  brick  box  would  answer  the  purpose. 
According  to  their  views,  not  a  shilling  of  public  money 
must  be  bestowed  upon  a  public  park  or  pleasure- 
ground  ;  not  sixpence  upon  the  relief  of  starvation,  or 
the  cure  of  disease.  Those  who  hold  these  views  support 
them  by  two  lines  of  argument.  They  enforce  them 
deductively  by  arguing  from  an  assumed  axiom,  that  the 
State  has  no  right  to  do  anything  but  protect  its  subjects 
from  aggression.  The  State  is  simply  a  policeman,  and 
its  duty  is  neither  more  nor  less  than  to  prevent  robbery 
and  murder  and  enforce  contracts.  It  is  not  to  promote 
good,  nor  even  to  do  anything  to  prevent  evil,  except  by 
the  enforcement  of  penalties  upon  those  who  have  been 
guilty  of  obvious  and  tangible  assaults  upon  purses  or 
persons.  And,  according  to  this  view,  the  proper  form 
of  government  is  neither  a  monarchy,  an  aristocracy,  nor 
a  democracy,  but  an  astynomocracy ,  or  police  govern- 
ment. On  the  other  hand,  these  views  are  supported  d 
posteriori,  by  an  induction  from  observation,  which  pro- 
fesses to  show  that  whatever  is  done  by  a  Government 
beyond  these  negative  limits,  is  not  only  sure  to  be  done 
badly,  but  to  be  done  much  worse  than  private  enterprise 
would  have  done  the  same  thing. 

I  am  by  no  means  clear  as  to  the  truth  of  the  latter 
proposition.  It  is  generally  supported  by  statements 
which  prove  clearly  enough  that  the  State  does  a  great 
many  things  very  badly.  But  this  is  really  beside  the 
question.  The  State  lives  in  a  glass  house  ;  we  see  what 
it  tries  to  do,  and  all  its  failures,  partial  or  total,  are 
made  the  most  of.  But  private  enterprise  is  sheltered 
under  good  opaque  bricks  and  mortar.  The  public 
rarely  knows  what  it  tries  to  do,  and  only  hears  of  failures 
when  they  are  gross  and  patent  to  all  the  world.  Who 


10  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [t. 

is  to  say  how  private  enterprise  would  come  out  if  it 
tried  its  hand  at  State  work  ?  Those  who  have  had  most 
experience  of  joint-stock  companies  and  their  manage- 
ment, will  probably  be  least  inclined  to  believe  in  the 
innate  superiority  of  private  enterprise  over  State  man- 
agement. If  continental  bureaucracy  and  centralization 
be  fraught  with  multitudinous  evils,  surely  English 
beadleocracy  and  parochial  obstruction  are  not  altogether 
lovely.  If  it  be  said  that,  as  a  matter  of  political  expe- 
rience, it  is  found  to  be  for  the  best  interests,  including 
the  healthy  and  free  development,  of  a  people,  that  the 
State  should  restrict  itself  to  what  is  absolutely  necessary, 
and  should  leave  to  the  voluntary  efforts  of  individuals 
as  much  as  voluntary  effort  can  be  got  to  do,  nothing 
can  be  more  just.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  seems  to 
me  that  nothing  can  be  less  justifiable  than  the  dogmatic 
assertion  that  State  interference,  beyond  the  limits  of 
home  and  foreign  police,  must,  under  all  circumstances, 
do  harm. 

Suppose,  however,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  that  we 
accept  the  proposition  that  the  functions  of  the  State 
may  be  properly  summed  up  in  the  one  great  negative 
commandment, — "Thou  shalt  not  allow  any  man  to 
interfere  with  the  liberty  of  any  other  man," — I  am 
unable  to  see  that  the  logical  consequence  is  any  such 
restriction  of  the  power  of  Government,  as  its  sup- 
porters imply.  If  my  next-door  neighbour  chooses  to 
have  his  drains  in  such  a  state  as  to  create  a  poisonous 
atmosphere,  which  I  breathe  at  the  risk  of  typhus  and 
diphtheria,  he  restricts  my  just  freedom  to  live  just  as 
much  as  if  he  went  about  with  a  pistol,  threatening  my 
life ;  if  he  is  to  be  allowed  to  let  his  children  go  unvac- 
cinated,  he  might  as  well  be  allowed  to  leave  strychnine 
lozenges  about  in  the  way  of  mine  ;  and  if  he  brings 
them°up  untaught  and  untrained  to  earn  their  living,  he 


i.J  ADMINISTRATIVE  NIHILISM.  11 

is  doing  liis  best  to  restrict  my  freedom,  by  increasing 
the  burden  of  taxation  for  the  support  of  gaols  and 
workhouses,  which  I  have  to  pay. 

The  higher  the  state  of  civilization,  the  more  completely 
do  the  actions  of  one  member  of  the  social  body  influence 
all  the  rest,  and  the  less  possible  is  it  for  any  one  man  to 
do  a  wrong  thing  without  interfering,  more  or  less,  with 
the  freedom  of  all  his  fellow-citizens.  So  that,  even  upon 
the  narrowest  view  of  the  functions  of  the  State,  it  must 
be  admitted  to  have  wider  powers  than  the  advocates  of 
the  police  theory  are  disposed  to  admit. 

It  is  urged,  I  am  aware,  that  if  the  right  of  the  State 
to  step  beyond  the  assigned  limits  is  admitted  at  all, 
there  is  no  stopping ;  and  that  the  principle  which  justi- 
fies the  State  in  enforcing  vaccination  or  education,  will 
also  justify  it  in  prescribing  my  religious  belief,  or  my 
mode  of  carrying  on  my  trade  or  profession ;  in  deter- 
mining the  number  of  courses  I  have  for  dinner,  or  the 
pattern  of  my  waistcoat. 

But  surely  the  answer  is  obvious  that,  on  similar 
grounds,  the  right  of  a  man  to  eat  when  he  is  hungry 
might  be  disputed,  because  if  you  once  allow  that  he  may 
eat  at  all,  there  is  no  stopping  him  until  he  gorges 
himself,  and  suffers  all  the  ills  of  a  surfeit.  In  practice, 
the  man  leaves  off  when  reason  tells  him  he  has  had 
enough  ;  and,  in  a  properly  organized  State,  the  Govern- 
ment, being  nothing  but  the  corporate  reason  of  the 
community,  will  soon  find  out  when  State  interference 
has  been  carried  far  enough.  And,  so  far  as  my 
acquaintance  with  those  who  carry  on  the  business  of 
Government  goes,  I  must  say  that  I  find  them  far  less 
eager  to  interfere  with  the  people,  than  the  people  are  to 
be  interfered  with.  And  the  reason  is  obvious.  The 
people  are  keenly  sensible  of  particular  evils,  and,  like  a 
man  suffering  from  pain,  desire  an  immediate  remedy. 
2 


i*  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [r. 

The  statesman,  on  the  other  hand,  is  like  the  physician,  who 
knows  that  he  can  stop  the  pain  at  once  by  an  opiate ; 
but  who  also  knows  that  the  opiate  may  do  more  harm 
than  good  in  the  long  run.  In  three  cases  out  of  four 
the  wisest  thing  he  can  do  is  to  wait,  and  leave  the  case 
to  nature.  But  in  the  fourth  case,  in  which  the  symptoms 
are  unmistakable,  and  the  cause  of  the  disease  distinctly 
known,  prompt  remedy  saves  a  life.  Is  the  fact  that 
a  wise  physician  wdll  give  as  little  medicine  as  possible 
any  argument  for  his  abstaining  from  giving  any  at  all  ? 

But  the  argument  may  be  met  directly.  It  may  be 
granted  that  the  State,  or  corporate  authority  of  the 
people,  might  with  perfect  propriety  order  my  religion,  or 
my  waistcoat,  if  as  good  grounds  could  be  assigned  for 
such  an  order  as  for  the  command  to  educate  my  children. 
And  this  leads  us  to  the  question  which  lies  at  the  root 
of  the  whole  discussion — the  question,  namely,  upon 
what  foundation  does  the  authority  of  the  State  rest, 
and  how  arc  the  limits  of  that  authority  to  be  deter- 
mined ? 

One  of  the  oldest  and  profoundest  of  English  philoso- 
phers, Hobbes  of  Malmesbury,  writes  thus  : — 

"The  office  of  the  sovereign,  be  it  monarch  or  an  assembly,  con- 
sisteth  in  the  end  for  which  he  was  entrusted  with  the  sovereign 
power,  namely,  the  procuration  of  the  safety  of  the  people  :  to  which  he 
is  obliged  by  the  law  of  nature,  and  to  render  an  account  thereof  to 
God,  the  author  of  that  law,  and  to  none  but  Him.  But  by  safety, 
here,  is  not  meant  a  bare  preservation,  but  also  all  other  contentments 
of  life,  which  every  man  by  lawful  industry,  without  danger  or  hurt  to 
the  commonwealth,  shall  acquire  to  himself." 

At  first  sight  this  may  appear  to  be  a  statement  of  the 
police-theory  of  government,  pure  and  simple  ;  but  it  is 
not  so.  For  Hobbes  goes  on  to  say : — 

"  And  this  is  intended  should  be  done,  not  by  care  applied  to  in- 
dividuals, further  than  their  protection  from  injuries,  when  they  shall 


Ij  ADMINISTRATIVE  NIHILISM.  13 

complain  ;  but  by  a  general  providence  contained  in  public  instruction 
both  of  doctrine  and  example ;  and  in  the  making  and  executing  of 
good  laws  to  which  individual  persons  may  apply  their  own  cases." l 

To  a  witness  of  the  civil  war  between  Charles  I.  and 
the  Parliament,  it  is  not  wonderful  that  the  dissolution 
of  the  bonds  of  society  which  is  involved  in  such  strife 
should  appear  to  be  "  the  greatest  evil  that  can  happen 
in  this  life;"  and  all  who 'have  read  the  "Leviathan" 
know  to  what  length  Hobbes's  anxiety  for  the  preserva- 
tion of  the  authority  of  the  representative  of  the  sove- 
reign power,  whatever  its  shape,  leads  him.  But  the 
justice  of  his  conception  of  the  duties  of  the  sovereign 
power  does  not  seem  to  me  to  be  invalidated  by  his  mon- 
strous doctrines  respecting  the  sacredness  of  that  power. 

To  Hobbes,  who  lived  during  the  break-up  of  the 
sovereign  power  by  popular  force,  society  appeared  to  be 
threatened  by  everything  which  weakened  that  power  : 
but,  to  John  Locke,  who  witnessed  the  evils  which  flow 
from  the  attempt  of  the  sovereign  power  to  destroy  the 
rights  of  the  people  by  fraud  and  violence,  the  danger 
lay  in  the  other  direction. 

The  safety  of  the  representative  of  the  sovereign 
power  itself  is  to  Locke  a  matter  of  very  small  moment, 
and  he  contemplates  its  abolition  when  it  ceases  to  do 
its  duty,  and  its  replacement  by  another,  as  a  matter  of 
course.  The  great  champion  of  the  revolution  of  1688 
could  do  no  less.  Nor  is  it  otherwise  than  natural  that 
he  should  seek  to  limit,  rather  than  to  enlarge,  the  powers 
of  the  State,  though  in  substance  he  entirely  agrees  with 
Hobbes's  view  of  its  duties  : — 

"  But  though  men,"  says  he,  "  when  they  enter  into  society,  give 
up  the  equality,  liberty,  and  executive  power  they  had  in  the  state  of 
nature,  into  the  hands  of  the  society,  to  be  so  far  disposed  of  by  the 
Legislature  as  the  good  of  society  shall  require  ;  yet  it  being  only  with 

1  "  Leviathan/'  Molesworth's  ed.  p.  322. 


14  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [i 

an  intention  in  every  one  the  better  to  preserve  himself,  his  liberty 
and  property  (for  no  rational  creature  can  be  supposed  to  change  his 
condition  with  an  intention  to  be  worse),  the  power  of  the  society,  or 
legislation,  constituted  by  them  can  never  be  supposed  to  extend  fur- 
ther than  the  common  good,  but  is  obliged  to  secure  every  one's  pro- 
perty by  providing  against  those  three  defects  above  mentioned,  that 
made  the  state  of  nature  so  unsafe  and  uneasy.  And  so,  whoever  has 
the  legislative  or  supreme  power  of  any  commonwealth,  is  bound  to 
govern  by  established  standing  laws,  promulgated  and  known  to  the 
people,  and  not  by  extemporary  decrees  ;  by  indifferent  and  upright 
judges,  who  are  to  decide  controversies  by  those  laws  :  and  to  employ 
the  force  of  the  community  at  home  only  in  the  execution  of  such 
laws;  or  abroad,  to  prevent  or  redress  foreign  injuries,  and  secure 
the  community  from  inroads  and  invasion.  And  all  this  to  be 
directed  to  no  other  end  than  the  peace,  safety,  and  public  good  of 
the  people." l 

Just  as  in  the  case  of  Hobbes,  so  in  that  of  Locke,  it 
may  at  first  sight  appear  from  this  passage  that  the  latter 
philosopher's  views  of  the  functions  of  Government 
incline  to  the  negative,  rather  than  the  positive,  side. 
But  a  further  study  of  Locke's  writings  will  at  once 
remove  this  misconception.  In  the  famous  "  Letter  con- 
cerning Toleration,"  Locke  says  : — 

"  The  commonwealth  seems  to  me  to  be  a  society  of  men  con- 
stituted only  for  the  procuring,  preserving,  and  advancing  their  own 
civil  interests. 

"  Civil  interests  I  call  life,  liberty,  health,  and  indolency  of  body ; 
and  the  possession  of  outward  things,  such  as  money,  lands,  houses, 
furniture,  and  the  like. 

"  "  It  is  the  duty  of  the  civil  magistrate,  by  the  impartial  execution 
of  equal  laws,  to  secure  unto  all  the  people  in  general,  and  to  every 
one  of  his  subjects  in  particular,  the  just  possession  of  those  things 
belonging  to  this  life. 

"...  The  whole  jurisdiction  of  the  magistrate  reaches  only  to 
these  civil  concernments.  .  .  .  All  civil  power,  right,  and  dominion,  is 
bounded  and  confined  to  the  only  care  of  promoting  these  things." 

Elsewhere  in  the  same  "  Letter,"  Locke  lays  down  the 
proposition  that  if  the  magistrate  understand  washing  a 

1  Locke's  Essay,  "  Of  Civil  Government,"  §  131. 


'•]  ADMINISTRATIVE  NIHILISM.  15 

child  "to  be  profitable  to  the  curing  or  preventing  any 
disease  that  children  are  subject  unto,  and  esteem  the 
matter  weighty  enough  to  be  taken  care  of  by  a  law,  in 
that  case  he  may  order  it  to  be  done." 

Locke  seems  to  differ  most  widely  from  Hobbes  by  his 
strong  advocacy  of  a  certain  measure  of  toleration  in 
religious  matters.  But  the  reason  why  the  civil  magis- 
trate ought  to  leave  religion  alone  is,  according  to  Locke, 
simply  this,  that  "  true  and  saving  religion  consists  in  the 
inward  persuasion  of  the  mind."  And  since  "  such  is  the 
nature  of  the  understanding  that  it  cannot  be  compelled 
to  the  belief  of  anything  by  outward  force,"  it  is  absurd 
to  attempt  to  make  men  religious  by  compulsion.  I 
cannot  discover  that  Locke  fathers  the  pet  doctrine  of 
modern  Liberalism,  that  the  toleration  of  error  is  a  good 
thing  in  itself,  and  to  be  reckoned  among  the  cardinal 
virtues ;  on  the  contrary,  in  this  very  "  Letter  on  Tolera- 
tion "  he  states  in  the  clearest  language  that  "  No  opinion 
contrary  to  human  society,  or  to  those  moral  rules  which 
are  necessary  to  the  preservation  of  civil  society,  are  to 
be  tolerated  by  the  magistrate."  And  the  practical  corol- 
lary which  he  draws  from  this  proposition  is  that  there 
ought  to  be  no  toleration  for  either  Papists  or  Atheists. 

After  Locke's  time  the  negative  view  of  the  functions 
of  Government  gradually  grew  in  strength,  until  it 
obtained  systematic  and  able  expression  in  Wilhelm  von 
Humboldt's  "Ideen,"1  the  essence  of  which  is  the 
denial  that  the  State  has  a  right  to  be  anything  more 
than  chief  policeman.  And,  of  late  years,  the  belief  in 
the  efficacy  of  doing  nothing,  thus  formulated,  has 
acquired  considerable  popularity  for  several  reasons. 
In  the  first  place,  men's  speculative  convictions  have 
become  less  and  less  real ;  their  tolerance  is  large 

1  An  English  translation  has  been  published  under  the  title  of  "  Essay  on  the 
Sphere  and  Duties  of  Government." 


10  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [r, 

because  their  belief  is  small ;  they  know  that  the  State 
had  better  leave  things  alone  unless  it  has  a  clear  know- 
ledge about  them  ;  and,  with  reason,  they  suspect  that 
the  knowledge  of  the  governing  power  may  stand  no 
higher  than  the  very  low  watermark  of  their  own. 

In  the  second  place,  men  have  become  largely  ab- 
sorbed in  the  mere  accumulation  of  wealth  ;  and  as  this 
is  a  matter  in  which  the  plainest  and  strongest  form  of 
self-interest  is  intensely  concerned,  science  (in  the  shape 
of  Political  Economy)  has  readily  demonstrated  that 
self-interest  may  be  safely  left  to  find  the  best  way  of 
attaining  its  ends.  Eapidity  and  certainty  of  inter- 
course between  different  countries,  the  enormous  deve- 
lopment of  the  powers  of  machinery,  and  general  peace 
(however  interrupted  by  brief  periods  of  warfare),  have 
changed  the  face  of  commerce  as  completely  as  modern 
artillery  has  changed  that  of  war.  The  merchant  found 
himself  as  much  burdened  by  ancient  protective  measures 
as  the  soldier  by  his  armour — and  negative  legislation 
has  been  of  as  much  use  to  the  one  as  the  stripping  off 
of  breast-plates,  greaves,  and  buff-coat  to  the  other. 
But  because  the  soldier  is  better  without  his  armour  it 
does  not  exactly  follow  that  it  is  desirable  that  our 
defenders  should  strip  themselves  stark  naked ;  and  it  is 
not  more  apparent  why  laissez-faire — great  and  benefi- 
cial as  it  may  be  in  all  that  relates  to  the  accumulation 
of  wealth — should  be  the  one  great  commandment  which 
the  State  is  to  obey  in  all  other  matters ;  and  especially 
in  those  in  which  the  justification  of  laissez-faire, 
namely,  the  keen  insight  given  by  the  strong  stimulus 
of  direct  personal  interest,  in  matters  clearly  understood, 
is  entirely  absent. 

Thirdly,  to  the  indifference  generated  by  the  absence 
of  fixed  beliefs,  and  to  the  confidence  in  the  efficacy  of 
laissezfaire,  apparently  justified  by  experience  of  the 


i.]  ADMINISTRATIVE  NIHILISM.  17 

value  of  that  principle  when  applied  to  the  pursuit  of 
wealth,  there  must  be  added  that  nobler  and  better 
reason  for  a  profound  distrust  of  legislative  interference, 
which  animates  Von  Humboldt  and  shines  forth  in  the 
pages  of  Mr.  Mill's  famous  Essay  on  Liberty — I  mean 
the  just  fear  lest  the  end  should  be  sacrificed  to  the 
means ;  lest  freedom  and  variety  should  be  drilled  and 
disciplined  out  of  human  life  in  order  that  the  great 
mill  of  the  State  should  grind  smoothly. 

One  of  the  profoundest  of  living  English  philosophers, 
who  is  at  the  same  time  the  most  thoroughgoing  and 
consistent  of  the  champions  of  astynomocracy,  has  de- 
voted a  very  able  and  ingenious  essay1  to  the  drawing 
out  of  a  comparison  between  the  process  by  which  men 
have  advanced  from  the  savage  state  to  the  highest 
civilization,  and  that  by  which  an  animal  passes  from 
the  condition  of  an  almost  shapeless  and  structureless 
germ,  to  that  in  which  it  exhibits  a  highly  complicated 
structure  and  a  corresponding  diversity  of  powers.  Mr. 
Spencer  says  with  great  justice— 

"  That  they  gradually  increase  in  mass ;  that  they  become,  little 
by  little,  more  complex  ;  that,  at  the  same  time,  their  parts  grow 
more  mutually  dependent ;  and  that  they  continue  to  live  and  grow 
as  wholes,  while  successive  generations  of  their  units  appear  and  dis- 
appear,— are  broad  peculiarities  which  bodies  politic  display,  in  common 
with  all  living  bodies,  and  in  which  they  and  living  bodies  differ  from 
everything  else." 

In  a  very  striking  passage  of  this  essay  Mr.  Spencer 
shows  with  what  singular  closeness  a  parallel  between 
the  development  of  a  nervous  system,  which  is  the 
governing  power  of  the  body  in  the  series  of  animal 
organisms,  and  that  of  government,  in  the  series  of  social 
organisms,  can  be  drawn  : — 

"  Strange  as  the  assertion  will  be  thought,"  says  Mr.  Spencer,  "our 
Houses  of  Parliament  discharge  in  the  social  economy  functions  that 

1  "  The  Social  Organism  :  "  Essays.     Second  Series. 


18  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [i. 

are,  in  suudry  respects,  comparable  to  those  discharged  by  the  cerebral 

masses  in  a  vertebrate  animal The  cerebrum  co-ordinates 

the  countless  heterogeneous  considerations  which  affect  the  present 
and  future  welfare  of  the  individual  as  a  whole  ;  and  the  Legislature 
co-ordinates  the  countless  heterogeneous  considerations  which  affect 
the  immediate  and  remote  welfare  of  the  whole  community.  We 
may  describe  the  office  of  the  brain  as  that  of  averaging  the  interests 
of  life,  physical,  intellectual,  moral,  social ;  and  a  good  brain  is  one  in 
which  the  desires  answering  to  their  respective  interests  are  so  balanced, 
that  the  conduct  they  jointly  dictate  sacrifice  none  of  them.  Similarly 
we  may  describe  the  office  of  Parliament  as  that  of  averaging  the 
interests  of  the  various  classes  in  a  community ;  and  a  good  Parlia- 
ment is  one  in  which  the  parties  answering  to  these  respective  interests 
are  so  balanced,  that  their  united  legislation  concedes  to  each  class  as 
much  as  consists  with  the  claims  of  the  rest." 

All  this  appears  to  be  very  just.  But  if  the  resemblances 
between  the  body  physiological  and  the  body  politic  are 
any  indication,  not  only  of  what  the  latter  is,  and  how 
it  has  become  what  it  is,  but  of  what  it  ought  to  be,  and 
what  it  is  tending  to  become,  I  cannot  but  think  that 
the  real  force  of  the  analogy  is  totally  opposed  to  the 
negative  view  of  State  function. 

L> 

Suppose  that,  in  accordance  with  this  view,  each 
muscle  were  to  maintain  that  the  nervous  system  had  no 
right  to  interfere  with  its  contraction,  except  to  prevent 
it  from  hindering  the  contraction  of  another  muscle  ;  or 
each  gland,  that  it  had  a  right  to  secrete,  so  long  as  its 
secretion  interfered  with  no  other ;  suppose  every  sepa- 
rate cell  left  free  to  follow  its  own  "  interests,"  and 
laissez-faire  lord  of  all,  what  would  become  of  the 
body  physiological  ? 

The  fact  is  that  the  sovereign  power  of  the  body 
thinks  for  the  physiological  organism,  acts  for  it,  and 
rules  the  individual  components  with  a  rod  of  iron. 
Even  the  blood-corpuscles  can't  hold  a  public  meeting 
without  being  accused  of  "  congestion  " — and  the  brain, 
like  other  despots  whom  we  have  known,  calls  out  at 


i.]  ADMINISTRATIVE  NIHILISM.  19 

once  for  the  use  of  sharp  steel  against  them.  As  in 
Hobbes's  "Leviathan,"  the  representative  of  the  sove- 
reign authority  in  the  living  organism,  though  he  de- 
rives all  his  powers  from  the  mass  which  he  rules,  is 
above  the  law.  The  questioning  of  his  authority  in- 
volves death,  or  that  partial  death  which  we  call  para- 
lysis. Hence,  if  the  analogy  of  the  body  politic  with 
the  body  physiological  counts  for  anything,  it  seems 
to  me  to  be  in  favour  of  a  much  larger  amount  of 
governmental  interference  than  exists  at  present,  or 
than  I,  for  one,  at  all  desire  to  see.  But,  tempting  as 
the  opportunity  is,  I  am  not  disposed  to  build  up  any 
argument  in  favour  of  my  own  case  upon  this  analogy, 
curious,'  interesting,  and  in  many  respects  close,  as  it 
is,  for  it  takes  no  cognizance  of  certain  profound  and 
essential  differences  between  the  physiological  and  the 
political  bodies. 

Much  as  the  notion  of  a  "  social  contract "  has  been 
ridiculed,  it  nevertheless  seems  to  be  clear  enough,  that 
all  social  organization  whatever  depends  upon  what  is 
substantially  a  contract,  whether  expressed  or  implied, 
between  the  members  of  the  society.  No  society  ever 
was,  or  ever  can  be,  really  held  together  by  force.  It 
may  seem  a  paradox  to  say  that  a  slaveholder  does  not 
make  his  slaves  work  by  force,  but  by  agreement.  And 
yet  it  is  true.  There  is  a  contract  between  the  two 
which,  if  it  were  written  out,  would  run  in  these  terms : 
— "  I  undertake  to  feed,  clothe,  house,  and  not  to  kill, 
flog,  or  otherwise  maltreat  you,  Quashie,  if  you  perform 
a  certain  amount  of  work."  Quashie,  seeing  no  better 
terms  to  be  had,  accepts  the  bargain,  and  goes  to  work 
accordingly.  A  highwayman  who  garottes  me,  and 
then  clears  out  my  pockets,  robs  me  by  force  in  the 
strict  sense  of  the  words ;  but  if  he  puts  a  pistol  to  my 
head  and  demands  my  money  or  my  life,  and  I,  prefer- 


20  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [i. 

ring  the  latter,  hand  over  my  purse,  we  have  virtually 
made  a  contract,  and  I  perform  one  of  the  terms  of  that 
contract.  If,  nevertheless,  the  highwayman  subsequently 
shoots  me,  everybody  will  see  that,  in  addition  to  the 
crimes  of  murder  and  theft,  he  has  been  guilty  of  a 
breach  of  contract. 

A  despotic  Government,  therefore,  though  often  a  mere 
combination  of  slaveholding  and  highway  robbery,  never- 
theless implies  a  contract  between  governor  and  governed, 
with  voluntary  submission  on  the  part  of  the  latter  ;  and 
d  fortiori,  all  other  forms  of  government  are  in  like  case. 

Now  a  contract  between  any  two  men  implies  a 
restriction  of  the  freedom  of  each  in  certain  particulars. 
The  highwayman  gives  up  his  freedom  to  shoot  me,  on 
condition  of  my  giving  up  my  freedom  to  do  as  I  like 
with  my  money :  I  give  up  my  freedom  to  kill  Quashie, 
on  condition  of  Quashie's  giving  up  his  freedom  to  be 
idle.  And  the  essence  and  foundation  of  every  social 
organization,  whether  simple  or  complex,  is  the  fact  that 
each  member  of  the  society  voluntarily  renounces  his 
freedom  in  certain  directions,  in  return  for  the  advan- 
tages which  he  expects  from  association  with  the  other 
members  of  that  society.  Nor  are  constitutions,  laws,  or 
manners,  in  ultimate  analysis,  anything  but  so  many 
expressed  or  implied  contracts  between  the  members  of 
a  society  to  do  this,  or  abstain  from  that. 

It  appears  to  me  that  this  feature  constitutes  the  dif- 
ference between  the  social  and  the  physiological  organism. 
Among  the  higher  physiological  organisms,  there  is  none 
which  is  developed  by  the  conjunction  of  a  number  of 
primitively  independent  existences  into  a  complex  whole. 
The  process  of  social  organization  appears  to  be  com- 
parable, not  so  much  to  the  process  of  organic  develop- 
ment, as  to  the  synthesis  of  the  chemist,  by  which  inde- 
pendent elements  are  gradually  built  up  into  complex 


i.]  ADMINISTRATIVE  NIHILISM.  21 

aggregations — in  which  each  clement  retains  an  inde- 
pendent individuality,  though  held  in  subordination  to 
the  whole.  The  atoms  of  carbon  and  hydrogen,  oxygen, 
nitrogen,  which  enter  into  a  complex  molecule,  do  not 
lose  the  powers  originally  inherent  in  them,  when  they 
unite  to  form  that  molecule,  the  properties  of  which 
express  those  forces  of  .the  whole  aggregation  which  are 
not  neutralized  and  balanced  by  one  another.  Each 
atom  has  given  up  something,  in  order  that  the  atomic 
society,  or  molecule,  may  subsist.  And  as  soon  as  any 
one  or  more  of  the  atoms  thus  associated  resumes  the 
freedom  which  it  has  renounced,  and  follows  some 
external  attraction,  the  molecule  is  broken  up,  and  all 
the  peculiar  properties  which  depended  upon  its  consti- 
tution vanish. 

Every  society,  great  or  small,  resembles  such  a  com- 
plex molecule,  in  which  the  atoms  are  represented  by 
men,  possessed  of  all  those  multifarious  attractions  and 
repulsions  which  are  manifested  in  their  desires  and 
volitions,  the  unlimited  power  of  satisfying  which,  we 
call  freedom.  The  social  molecule  exists  in  virtue  of  the 
renunciation  of  more  or  less  of  this  freedom  by  every 
individual.-  It  is  decomposed,  when  the  attraction  of 
desire  leads  to  the  resumption  of  that  freedom,  the  sup- 
pression of  which  is  essential  to  the  existence  of  the 
social  molecule.  And  the  great  problem  of  that  social 
chemistry  we  call  politics,  is  to  discover  what  desires  of 
mankind  may  be  gratified,  and  what  must  be  suppressed, 
if  the  highly  complex  compound,  society,  is  to  avoid 
decomposition.  That  the  gratification  of  some  of  men's 
desires  shall  be  renounced  is  essential  to  order ;  that  the 
satisfaction  of  others  shall  be  permitted  is  no  less 
essential  to  progress ;  and  the  business  of  the  sovereign 
authority — which  is,  or  ought -to  be,  simply  a  delegation 
of  the  people  appointed  to  act  for  its  good — appears  to 


22  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [1. 

me  to  he,  not  only  to  enforce  the  renunciation  of  the 
anti-social  desires,  but,  wherever  it  may  be  necessary,  to 
promote  the  satisfaction  of  those  which  are  conducive  to 
progress. 

The  great  metaphysician,  Immanuel  Kant,  who  is  at 
his  greatest  when  he  discusses  questions  which  are  not 
metaphysical,  wrote,  nearly  a  century  ago,  a  wonderfully 
instructive  essay  entitled  "A  Conception  of  Universal 
History  in  relation  to  Universal  Citizenship," l  from  which 
I  will  borrow  a  few  pregnant  sentences  : — 

"  The  means  of  which  Nature  has  availed  herself,  in  order  to  bring 
about  the  development  of  all  the  capacities  of  man,  is  the  antagonism 
of  those  capacities  to  social  organization,  so  far  as  the  latter  does  in 
the  long  run  necessitate  their  definite  correlation.  By  antagonism,  I 
here  mean  the  unsocial  sociability  of  mankind — that  is,  the  combina- 
tion in  them  of  an  impulse  to  enter  into  society,  with  a  thorough 
spirit  of  opposition  which  constantly  threatens  to  break  up  this 
society.  The  ground  of  this  lies  in  human  nature.  Man  has  an 
inclination  to  enter  into  society,  because  in  that  state  he  feels  that  he 
becomes  more  a  man,  or,  in  other  words,  that  his  natural  faculties 
develop.  But  he  has  also  a  great  tendency  to  isolate  himself,  because 
he  is,  at  the  same  time,  aware  of  the  unsocial  peculiarity  of  desiring 
to  have  everything  his  own  way  •  and  thus,  being  conscious  of  an 
inclination  to  oppose  others,  he  is  naturally  led  to  expect  opposition 
from  them. 

"  Now  it  is  this  opposition  which  awakens  all  the  dormant  powers 
of  men,  stimulates  them  to  overcome  their  inclination  to  be  idle,  and, 
spurred  by  the  love  of  honour,  or  power,  or  wealth,  to  make  them- 
selves a  place  among  their  fellows,  whom  they  can  neither  do  with, 
nor  do  without. 

"Thus  they  make  the  first  steps  from  brutishness  towards  culture, 
of  which  the  social  value  of  man  is  the  measure.  Thus  all  talents 
become  gradually  developed,  taste  is  formed,  and  by  continual  en- 
lightenment the  foundations  of  a  way  of  thinking  are  laid,  which 
gradually  changes  the  mere  rude  capacity  of  moral  perception  into 

1 "  Idee  zu  einer  allgemeinen  Geschichte  in  weltbiirgerlichen  Absicht,"  1784. 
This  paper  has  been  translated  by  De  Quincey,  and  attention  has  been  recently 
drawn  to  its  "  signal  merits  "  by  the  Editor  of  the  Fortnightly  Review  in  his 
Essay  on  Condorcet.  (Fortnightly  Review,  No.  xxxviii.  N.S.  pp.  136, 137.) 


I.]  ADMINISTRATIVE  NIHILISM.  23 

determinate  practical  principles;  and  thus  society,  which  is  originated 
by  a  sort  of  pathological  compulsion,  becomes  metamorphosed  into  a 
moral  unity."  (Loc.  cit.  p.  147.) 

"  All  the  culture  and  art  which  adorn  humanity,  the  most  refined 
social  order,  are  produced  by  that  unsociability  which  is  compelled  by 
its  own  existence  to  discipline  itself,  and  so  by  enforced  art  to  bring 
the  seeds  implanted  by  nature  into  full  flower."  (Loc.  cit.  p.  148.) 

.  In  these  passages,  as  in  others  of  this  remarkable  tract, 
Kant  anticipates  the  application  of  the  "  struggle  for 
existence  "  to  politics,  and  indicates  the  manner  in  which 
the  evolution  of  society  has  resulted  from  the  constant 
attempt  of  individuals  to  strain  its  bonds.  If  indivi- 
duality has  no  play,  society  does  not  advance  ;  if  indi- 
viduality breaks  out  of  all  bounds,  society  perishes. 

But  when  men  living  in  society  once  become  aware 
that  their  welfare  depends  upon  two  opposing  tendencies 
of  equal  importance — the  one  restraining,  the  other 
encouraging,  individual  freedom — the  question  "What 
are  the  functions  of  Government?"  is  translated  into 
another — namely,  What  ought  we  men,  in  our  corporate 
capacity,  to  do,  not  only  in  the  way  of  restraining  that 
free  individuality  which  is  inconsistent  with  the  existence 
of  society,  but  in  encouraging  that  free  individuality 
which  is  essential  to  the  evolution  of  the  social  organiza- 
tion ?  The  formula  which  truly  defines  the  function  of 
Government  must  contain  the  solution  of  both  the 
problems  involved,  and  not  merely  of  one  of  them. 

Locke  has  furnished  us  with  such  a  formula,  in  the 
noblest,  and  at  the  same  time  briefest,  statement  of  the 
purpose  of  Government  known  to  me  : — 

11  THE  END  OF  GOVERNMENT  is  THE  GOOD  OF 
MANKIND."  1 

But  the  good  of  mankind  is  not  a  something  which  is 
absolute  and  fixed  for  all  men,  whatever  their  capacities 

1  "  Of  Civil  Government,"  §  229. 


21  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [i. 

or  state  of  civilization.  Doubtless  it  is  possible  to 
imagine  a  true  "Civitas  Dei,"  in  which  every  man's 
moral  faculty  shall  be  such  as  leads  him  to  control  all 
those  desires  which  run  counter  to  the  good  of  mankind, 
and  to  cherish  only  those  which  conduce  to  the  welfare 
of  society ;  and  in  which  every  man's  native  intellect 
shall  be  sufficiently  strong,  and  his  culture  sufficiently 
extensive,  to  enable  him  to  know  what  he  ought  to 
do  and  to  seek  after.  And,  in  that  blessed  State,  police 
will  be  as  much  a  superfluity  as  every  other  kind  of 
government. 

But  the  eye  of  man  has  not  beheld  that  State,  and  is 
not  likely  to  behold  it  for  some  time  to  come.  What  we 
do  see,  in  fact,  is  that  States  are  made  up  of  a  consider- 
able number  of  the  ignorant  and  foolish,  a  small  pro- 
portion of  genuine  knaves,  and  a  sprinkling  of  capable 
and  honest  men,  by  whose  efforts  the  former  are  kept  in 
a  reasonable  state  of  guidance,  and  the  latter  of  repres- 
sion. And,  such  being  the  case,  I  do  not  see  how  any 
limit  whatever  can  be  laid  down  as  to  the  extent  to 
which,  under  some  circumstances,  the  action  of  Govern- 
ment may  be  rightfully  carried. 

Was  our  own  Government  wrong  in  suppressing 
Thuggee  in  India  ?  If  not,  would  it  be  wrong  in  put- 
ting down  any  enthusiast  who  attempted  to  set  up  the 
worship  of  Astarte  in  the  Hay  market  ?  Has  the  State 
no  right  to  put  a  stop  to  gross  and  open  violations  of 
common  decency  ?  And  if  the  State  has,  as  I  believe  it 
has,  a  perfect  right  to  do  all  these  things,  are  we  not 
bound  to  admit,  with  Locke,  that  it  may  have  a  right  to 
interfere  with  "  Popery  "  and  "  Atheism,"  if  it  be  really 
true  that  the  practical  consequences  of  such  beliefs  can 
be  proved  to  be  injurious  to  civil  society  ?  The  question 
where  to  draw  the  line  between  those  things  with  which 
the  State  ought,  and  those  with  which  it  ought  not,  to 


i.]  ADMINISTRATIVE  NIlTfff  ^  26 

interfere,  then,  is  one  which  must  be  left  to  be  decided 
separately  for  each  individual  case.  The  difficulty  which 
meets  the  statesman  is  the  same  as  that  which  meets  us 
all  in  individual  life,  in  which  our  abstract  rights  arc 
generally  clear  enough,  though  it  is  frequently  extremely 
hard  to  say  at  what  point  it  is  wise  to  cease  our  attempts 
to  enforce  them. 

The  notion  that  the  social  body  should  be  organized  in 
such  a  manner  as  to  advance  the  welfare  of  its  members, 
is  as  old  as  political  thought ;  and  the  schemes  of  Plato, 
More,  Robert  Owen,  St.  Simon,  Comte,  and  the  modern 
socialists,  bear  witness  that,  in  every  age,  men  whose 
capacity  is  of  no  mean  order,  and  whose  desire  to  benefit 
their  fellows  has  rarely  been  excelled,  have  been  strongly, 
nay,  enthusiastically,  convinced  that  Government  may 
attain  its  end — the  good  of  the  people — by  some  more 
effectual  process  than  the  very  simple  and  easy  one 
of  putting  its  hands  in  its  pockets,  and  letting  them 
alone. 

It  may  be,  that  all  the  schemes  of  social  organization 
which  have  hitherto  been  propounded  are  impracticable 
follies.  But  if  this  be  so,  the  fact  proves,  not  that  the 
idea  which  underlies  them  is  worthless,  but  only  that  the 
science  of  politics  is  in  a  very  rudimentary  and  imperfect 
state.  Politics,  as  a  science,  is  not  older  than  astronomy ; 
but  though  the  subject-matter  of  the  latter  is  vastly  less 
complex  than  that  of  the  former,  the  theory  of  the  moon's 
motions  is  not  quite  settled  yet. 

Perhaps  it  may  help  us  a  little  way  towards  getting 
clearer  notions  of  what  the  State  may  and  what  it  may 
not  do,  if,  assuming  the  truth  of  Locke's  maxim  that 
"  the  end  of  Government  is  the  good  of  mankind,"  we 
consider  a  little  what  the  good  of  mankind  is. 

I  take  it  that  the  good  of  mankind  means  the  attain- 
ment, by  every  man,  of  all  the  happiness  which  he  can 


26  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [i. 

enjoy  without  diminishing  the  happiness  of  his  fellow- 


men.1 


If  we  inquire  what  kinds  of  happiness  come  under 
this  definition,  we  find  those  derived  from  the  sense  of 
security  or  peace ;  from  wealth,  or  commodity,  obtained 
by  commerce ;  from  Art — whether  it  be  architecture, 
sculpture,  painting,  music,  or  literature ;  from  knowledge, 
or  science ;  and,  finally,  from  sympathy  or  friendship. 
No  man  is  injured,  but  the  contrary,  by  peace.  No  man 
is  any  the  worse  off  because  another  acquires  wealth  by 
trade,  or  by  the  exercise  of  a  profession ;  on  the  con- 
trary, he  cannot  have  acquired  his  wealth,  except  by 
benefiting  others  to  the  full  extent  of  what  they  con- 
sidered to  be  its  value  ;  and  his  wealth  is  no  more  than 
fairy  gold  if  he  does  not  go  on  benefiting  others  in  the 
same  way.  A  thousand  men  may  enjoy  the  pleasure 
derived  from  a  picture,  a  symphony,  or  a  poem,  without 
lessening  the  happiness  of  the  most  devoted  connoisseur. 
The  investigation  of  nature  is  an  infinite  pasture-ground, 
where  all  may  graze,  and  where  the  more  bite,  the  longer 
the  grass  grows,  the  sweeter  is  its  flavour,  and  the  more 
it  nourishes.  If  I  love  a  friend,  it  is  no  damage  to  me, 
but  rather  a  pleasure,  if  all  the  world  also  love  him  and 
think  of  him  as  highly  as  I  do. 

It  appears  to  be  universally  agreed,  for  the  reasons 
already  mentioned,  that  it  is  unnecessary  and  undesirable 
for  the  State  to  attempt  to  promote  the  acquisition  of 
wealth  by  any  direct  interference  with  commerce.  But 
there  is  no  such  agreement  as  to  the  further  question 

1  "  Hie  est  itaque  finis  ad  quern  tendo,  talem  scilicet  Katuram  acquirere,  et 
ut  multi  mecum  earn  acquirant,  conari  hoc  est  de  mea  felicitate  etiam  operafn 
dare,  ut  alii  multi  idem  atque  ego  intelligant,  ut  eorum  intellectus  et  cupiditas 
prorsus  cum  meo  intellect^  et  cupiditate  conveniant :  atque  hoc  fiat,  necesse 
est  tantum  de  Natura  intelligere,  quantum,;sufficit  ad  talem  naturam  acquiren- 
dam ;  deinde  formare  talem  societatem  qualis  est  desideranda,  ut  quam  plurimi 
quam  facillime  et  secure  eo  perveniant."— B.  SPINOZA,  De  Intellect-fa  Emen- 
datione  Tradatus. 


i.]  ADMINISTRATIVE  NIHILISM.  27 

whether  the  State  may  not  promote  the  acquisition  of 
wealth  by  indirect  means.  For  example,  may  the  State 
make  a  road,  or  build  a  harbour,  when  it  is  quite  clear 
that  by  so  doing  it  will  open  up  a  productive  district, 
and  thereby  add  enormously  to  the  total  wealth  of  the 
community  ?  And  if  so,  may  the  State,  acting  for  the 
general  good,  take  charge  of  the  means  of  communica- 
tion between  its  members,  or  of  the  postal  and  telegraph 
services  ?  I  have  not  yet -met  with  any  valid  argument 
against  the  propriety  of  the  State  doing  what  our 
Government  does  in  this  matter  ;  except  the  assumption, 
which  remains  to  be  proved,  that  Government  will 
manage  these  things  worse  than  private  enterprise  would 
do.  Npr  is  there  any  agreement  upon  the  still  more 
important  question  whether  the  State  ought,  or  ought 
not,  to  regulate  the  distribution  of  wealth.  If  it  ought 

O  O 

not,  then  all  legislation  which  regulates  inheritance — the 
statute  of  Mortmain,  and  the  like — is  wrong  in  principle  ; 
and,  when  a  rich  man  dies,  we  ought  to  return  to  the 
state  of  nature,  and  have  a  scramble  for  his  property. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  authority  of  the  State  is  legiti- 
mately employed  in  regulating  these  matters,  then  it  is 
an  open  question,  to  be  decided  entirely  by  evidence  as 
to  what  tends  to  the  highest  good  of  the  people,  whether 
we  keep  our  present  laws,  or  whether  we  modify  them. 
At  present  the  State  protects  men  in  the  possession  and 
enjoyment  of  their  property,  and  defines  what  that  pro- 
perty is.  The  justification  for  its  so  doing  is  that  its 
action  promotes  the  good  of  the  people.  If  it  can  be 
clearly  proved  that  the  abolition  of  property  would  tend 
still,  more  to  promote  the  good  of  the  people,  the  State 
will  have  the  same  justification  for  abolishing  property 
that  it  now  has  for  maintaining  it. 

Again,  I  suppose  it  is  universally  agreed  that  it  would 
be  useless  and  absurd  for  the  State  to  attempt  to  pro- 


28  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [r. 

mote  friendship  and  sympathy  between  man  and  man 
directly.  But  I  see  no  reason  why,  if  it  be  otherwise  expe- 
dient, the  State  may  not  do  something  towards  that  end 
indirectly.  For  example,  I  can  conceive  the  existence 
of  an  Established  Church  which  should  be  a  blessing  to 
the  community.  A  Church  in  which,  week  by  week, 
services  should  be  devoted,  not  to  the  iteration  of  abstract 
propositions  in  theology,  but  to  the  setting  before  men's 
minds  of  an  ideal  of  true,  just,  and  pure  living ;  a  place 
in  which  those  who  are  weary  of  the  burden  of  daily 
cares,  should  find  a  moment's  rest  in  the  contemplation 
of  the  higher  life  which  is  possible  for  all,  though  attained 
by  so  few  ;  a  place  in  which  the  man  of  strife  and  of  busi- 
ness should  have  time  to  think  how  small,  after  all,  are 
the  rewards  he  covets  compared  with  peace  and  charity. 
Depend  upon  it,  if  such  a  Church  existed,  no  one  would 
seek  to  disestablish  it. 

Whatever  the  State  may  not  do,  however,  it  is  uni- 
versally agreed  that  it  may  take  charge  of  the  main- 
tenance of  internal  and  external  peace.  Even  the 
strongest  advocate  of  administrative  nihilism  admits 
that  Government  may  prevent  aggression  of  one  man 
on  another.  But  this  implies  the  maintenance  of  an 
army  and  navy,  as  much  as  of  a  body  of  police  ;  it 
implies  a  diplomatic  as  well  as  a  detective  force  ;  and 
it  implies,  further,  that  the  State,  as  a  corporate  whole, 
shall  have  distinct  and  definite  views  as  to  its  wants, 
powers,  and  obligations. 

For  independent  States  stand  in  the  same  relation  to 
one  another  as  men  in  a  state  of  nature,  or  unlimited 
freedom.  Each  endeavours  to  get  all  it  can,  until  the 
inconvenience  of  the  state  of  war  suggests  either  the 
formation  of  those  express  contracts  we  call  treaties,  or 
mutual  consent  to  those  implied  contracts  which  are 
expressed  by  international  law.  The  moral  rights  of  a 


i.]  ADMINISTRATIVE  NIHILISM.  29 

State  rest  upon  the  same  basis  as  those  of  an  individual. 
If  any  number  of  States  agree  to  observe  a  common  set 
of  international  laws,  they  have,  in  fact,  set  up  a  sove- 
reign authority  or  supra-national  government,  the  end 
of  which,  like  that  of  all  governments,  is  the  good  of 
mankind  ;  and  the  possession  of  as  much  freedom  by 
each  State,  as  is  consistent  with  the  attainment  of  that 
end.  But  there  is  this  difference  :  that  the  government 
thus  set  up  over  nations  is  ideal,  and  has  no  concrete 
representative  of  the  sovereign  power  ;  whence  the  only 
way  of  settling  any  dispute  finally  is  to  fight  it  out. 
Thus  the  supra-national  society  is  continually  in  danger 
of  returning  to  the  state  of  nature,  in  which  contracts 
are  void  ;  and  the  possibility  of  this  contingency  justifies 
a  government  in  restricting  the  liberty  of  its  subjects  in 
many  ways  that  would  otherwise  be  unjustifiable. 

Finally,  with  respect  to  the  advancement  of  science 
and  art.  I  have  never  yet  had  the  good  fortune  to  hear 
any  valid  reason  alleged  why  that  corporation  of  indi- 
viduals we  call  the  State  may  not  do  what  voluntary 
effort  fails  in  doing,  either  from  want  of  intelligence  or 
lack  of  will.  And  here  it  cannot  be  alleged  that  the 
action  of  the  State  is  always  hurtful.  On  the  contrary, 
in  every  country  in  Europe,  universities,  public  libraries, 
picture  galleries,  museums,  and  laboratories,  have  been 
established  by  the  State,  and  have  done  infinite  service 
to  the  intellectual  and  moral  progress  and  the  refine- 
ment of  mankind. 

A  few  days  ago  I  received  from  one  of  the  most  eminent 
members  of  the  Institut  of  France  a  pamphlet  entitled 
"  Pourquoi  la  France  n'a  pas  trouve  d'hommes  superieurs 
au  moment  du  peril."  The  writer,  M.  Pasteur,  has  no 
doubt  that  the  cause  of  the  astounding  collapse  of  his 
countrymen  is  to  be  sought  in  the  miserable  neglect  of 
the  higher  branches  of  culture,  which  has  been  one  of 


30  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [i. 

the  many  disgraces  of   the  Second   Empire,  if  not   of 
its  predecessors. 

"An  point  ou  nous  sommes  arrives  de  ce  qu'on  appelle  la  civilisation 
moderne,  la  culture  des  sciences  dans  leur  expression  la  plus  elevee  est 
peut-etre  plus  necessaire  encore  a  1'etat  moral  d'une  nation  qu'&  sa 
prosperi  te  mate'rielle. 

"  Les  grandes  decouvertes,  les  meditations  de  la  pensee  dans  les  arts, 
dans  les  sciences  et  dans  les  lettres,  en  tin  mot  les  travaux  desinte- 
resses  de  1'esprit  dans  tous  les  genres,  les  centres  d'enseignement  pro- 


jug£s  et  les  erreurs.  Us  e*le~vent  le  niveau  intellectuel,  le  sentiment 
moral ;  par  eux,  Tide"e  divine  elle-meme  se  repand  et  s'exalte.  ...  Si, 
au  moment  du  pe"ril  supreme,  la  France  n'a  pas  trouve  des  hommes 
superieurs  pour  mettre  en  oeuvre  ses  ressources  et  le  courage  de  ses 
enfants,  il  faut  1'attribuer,  j'en  ai  la  conviction,  a  ce  que  la  France  s'eet 
desinte'resse'e,  depuis  un  demi-sie"cle,  des  grands  travaux  de  la  pensee, 
particulierement  dans  les  sciences  exactes." 

Individually,  I  have  no  love  for  academies  on  the 
continental  model,  and  still  less  for  the  system  of 
decorating  men  of  distinction  in  science,  letters,  or  art, 
with  orders  and  titles,  or  enriching  them  with  sinecures. 
What  men  of  science  want  is  only  a  fair  day's  wages  for 
more  than  a  fair  day's  work  ;  and  most  of  us,  I  suspect, 
would  be  well  content  if,  for  our  days  and  nights  of 
unremitting  toil,  we  could  secure  the  pay  which  a  first- 
class  Treasury  clerk  earns  without  any  obviously  trying 
strain  upon  his  faculties.  The  sole  order  of  nobility 
which,  in  my  judgment,  becomes  a  philosopher,  is  that 
rank  which  he  holds  in  the  estimation  of  his  fellow- 
workers,  who  are  the  only  competent  judges  in  such 
matters.  Newton  and  Cuvier  lowered  themselves  when 
the  one  accepted  an  idle  knighthood,  and  the  other 
became  a  baron  of  the  empire.  The  great  men  who  went 
to  their  graves  as  Michael  Faraday  and  George  Grote 
seem  to  me  to  have  understood  the  dignity  of  know- 


i.]  ADMINISTRATIVE  NIHILISM.  31 

ledge  better  when  they  declined  all  such  meretricious 
trappings. 

But  it  is  one  thing  for  the  State  to  appeal  to  the 
vanity  and  ambition  which  are  to  be  found  in  philoso- 
phical as  in  other  breasts,  and  another  to  offer  men  who 
desire  to  do  the  hardest  of  work  for  the  most  modest 
of  tangible  rewards,  the  means  of  making  themselves 
useful  to  their  age  and  generation.  And  this  is  just 
what  the  State  does  when  it  founds  a  public  library  or 
museum,  or  provides  the  means  of  scientific  research  by 
such  grants  of  money  as  that  administered  by  the  Eoyal 
Society. 

It  is  one  thing,  again,  for  the  State  to  take  all  the 
higher  education  of  the  nation  into  its  own  hands ;  it 
is  another  to  stimulate  and  to  aid,  while  they  are  yet 
young  and  weak,  local  efforts  to  the  same  end.  The 
Midland  Institute,  Owens  College  in  Manchester,  the 
newly  instituted  Science  College  in  Newcastle,  are  all 
noble  products  of  local  energy  and  munificence.  But 
the  good  they  are  doing  is  not  local — the  common- 
wealth, to  its  uttermost  limits,  shares  in  the  benefits 
they  confer;  and  I  am  at  a  loss  to  understand  upon 
what  principle  of  equity  the  State,  which  admits  the 
principle  of  payment  on  results,  refuses  to  give  a  fail- 
equivalent  for  these  benefits ;  or  on  what  principle  of 
justice  the  State,  which  admits  the  obligation  of  sharing 
the  duty  of  primary  education  with  a  locality,  denies  the 
existence  of  that  obligation  when  the  higher  education 
is  in  question. 

To  sum  up  :  If  the  positive  advancement  of  the  peace, 
wealth,  and  the  intellectual  and  moral  development  of 
its  members,  are  objects  which  the  Government,  as  the 
representative  of  the  corporate  authority  of  society,  may 
justly  strive  after,  in  fulfilment  of  its  end — the  good  of  \ 
mankind  ;  then  it  is  clear  that  the  Government  may 


32  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  i.] 

undertake  to  educate  the  people.  For  education  promotes 
peace  by  teaching  'men  the  realities  of  life  and  the 
obligations  which  are  involved  in  the  very  existence  of 
society ;  it  promotes  intellectual  development,  not  only 
by  training  the  individual  intellect,  but  by  sifting  out 
from  the  masses  of  ordinary  or  inferior  capacities,  those 
who  are  competent  to  increase  the  general  welfare  by 
occupying  higher  positions ;  and,  lastly,  it  promotes 
morality  and  refinement,  by  teaching  men  to  discipline 
themselves,  and  by  leading  them  to  see  that  the  highest, 
as  it  is  the  only  permanent,  content  is  to  be  attained, 
not  by  grovelling  in  the  rank  and  steaming  valleys 
of  sense,  but  by  continual  striving  towards  those  high 
peaks,  where,  resting  in  eternal  calm,  reason  discerns  the 
undefined  but  bright  ideal  of  the  highest  Good — "  a 
cloud  by  day,  a  pillar  of  fire  by  night." 


II. 

THE  SCHOOL  BOARDS  :  WHAT  THEY  CAN  DO, 
AND  WHAT  THEY  MAY  DO. 


AN  electioneering  manifesto  would  be  out  of  place  in  the 
pages  of  this  Review ;  but  any  suspicion  that  may  arise 
in  the  mind  of  the  reader  that  the  following  pages 
partake  of  that  nature,  will  be  dispelled,  if  he  reflect 
that  they  cannot  be  published  l  until  after  the  day  on 
which  the  ratepayers  of  the  metropolis  will  have  decided 
which  candidates  for  seats  upon  the  Metropolitan  School 
Board  they  will  take,  and  which  they  will  leave. 

As  one  of  those  candidates,  I  may  be  permitted  to 
say,  that  I  feel  much  in  the  frame  of  mind  of  the  Irish 
bricklayer's  labourer,  who  bet  another  that  he  could  not 
carry  him  to  the  top  of  the  ladder  in  his  hod.  The 
challenged  hodman  won  his  wager,  but  as  the  stakes 
were  handed  over,  the  challenger  wistfully  remarked, 
"  I'd  great  hopes  of  falling  at  the  third  round  from  the 
top."  And,  in  view  of  the  work  and  the  worry  which 
awaits  the  members  of  the  School  Boards,  I  must  confess 
to  an  occasional  ungrateful  hope  that  the  friends  who  are 

1  Notwithstanding  Mr.  Huxley's  intentions,  the  Editor  took  upon  himself,  in 
wliat  seemed  to  him  to  be  the  public  interest,  to  send  an  extract  from  this 
article  to  the  newspapers — before  the  day  of  the  election  of  the  School  Board. 
— EDITOR  of  the  Contemporary  Review. 


34  CRITIQUES    AND  ADDRESSES.  [n- 

toiliog  upwards  with  me  in  their  hod,  may,  when  they 
reach  "  the  third  round  from  the  top,"  let  me  fall  back 
into  peace  and  quietness. 

But  whether  fortune  befriend  me  in  this  rough 
method,  or  not,  I  should  like  to  submit  to  those  of  whom 
I  am  a  potential,  but  of  whom  I  may  not  be  an  actual, 
colleague,  and  to  others  who  may  be  interested  in  this 
most  important  problem — how  to  get  the  Education  Act 
to  work  efficiently — some  considerations  as  to  what  are 
the  duties  of  the  members  of  the  School  Boards,  and 
what  are  the  limits  of  their  power. 

I  suppose  no  one  will  be  disposed  to  dispute  the 
proposition,  that  the  prime  duty  of  every  member  of 
such  a  Board  is  to  endeavour  to  administer  the  Act 
honestly ;  or  in  accordance,  not  only  with  its  letter,  but 
with  its  spirit.  And  if  so,  it  would  seem  that  the  first 
step  towards  this  very  desirable  end  is,  to  obtain  a  clear 
notion  of  what  that  letter  signifies,  and  what  that  spirit 
implies ;  or,  in  other  words,  what  the  clauses  of  the  Act 
are  intended  to  enjoin  and  to  forbid.  So  that  it  is  really 
not  admissible,  except  for  factious  and  abusive  purposes, 
to  assume  that  any  one  who  endeavours  to  get  at  this 
clear  meaning  is  desirous  only  of  raising  quibbles  and 
making  difficulties. 

Beading  the  Act  with  this  desire  to  understand  it,  I 
find  that  its  provisions  may  be  classified,  as  might 
naturally  be  expected,  under  two  heads  :  the  one  set 
relating  to  the  subject-matter  of  education ;  the  other  to 
the  establishment,  maintenance,  and  administration  of 
the  schools  in  which  that  education  is  to  be  conducted. 

Now  it  is  a  most  important  circumstance,  that  all  the 
sections  of  the  Act,  except  four,  belong  to  the  latter 
division  ;  that  is,  they  refer  to  mere  matters  of  adminis- 
tration. The  four  sections  in  question  are  the  seventh, 
the  fourteenth,  the  sixteenth,  and  the  ninety-seventh. 


ii.]  THE  SCHOOL  BOAEDS.  35 

Of  these,  the  seventh,  the  fourteenth,  and  the  ninety- 
seventh  deal  with  the  subject-matter  of  education,  while 
the  sixteenth  defines  the  nature  of  the  relations  which 
are  to  exist  between  the  "Education  Department"  (an 
euphemism  for  the  future  Minister  of  Education)  and 
the  School  Boards.  It  is  the  sixteenth  clause  which  is 
the  most  important,  and,  in  some  respects,  the  most 
remarkable  of  all.  It  runs  thus  : — 

"  If  the  School  Board  do,  or  permit,  any  act  in  contravention  of,  or 
fail  to  comply  with,  the  regulations,  according  to  which  a  school  pro- 
vided by  them  is  required  by  this  Act  to  bo  conducted,  the  Education 
Department  may  declare  the  School  Board  to  be,  and  such  Board  shall 
accordingly  be  deemed  to  be,  a  Board  in  default,  and  the  Education 
Department  may  proceed  accordingly ;  and  every  act,  or  omission,  of 
any  member  of  the  School  Board,  or  manager  appointed  by  them,  or 
any  person  under  the  control  of  the  Board,  shall  be  deemed  to  be  per- 
mitted by  the  Board,  unless  the  contrary  be  proved. 

"If  any  dispute  arises  as  to  whether  the  School  Board  have  done,  or 
permitted,  any  act  in  contravention  of,  or  have  failed  to  comply  with, 
the  said  regulations,  the  matter  shall  be  referred  to  the  Education  .Depart- 
ment, whose  decision  thereon  shall  be  final" 

It  will  be  observed  that  this  clause  gives  the  Minister 
of  Education  absolute  power  over  the  doings  of  the 
School  Boards.  He  is  not  only  the  administrator  of  the 
Act,  but  he  is  its  interpreter.  I  had  imagined  that  on 
the  occurrence  of  a  dispute,  not  as  regards  a  question  of 
pure  administration,  but  as  to  the  meaning  of  a  clause 
of  the  Act,  a  case  might  be  taken  and  referred  to  a  court 
of  justice.  But  I  am  led  to  believe  that  the  Legislature 
has,  in  the  present  instance,  deliberately  taken  this 
power  out  of  the  hands  of  the  judges  and  lodged  it  in 
those  of  the  Minister  of  Education,  who,  in  accordance 
with  our  method  of  making  Ministers,  will  necessarily 
be  a  political  partisan,  and  who  may  be  a  strong  theo- 
logical sectary  into  the  bargain.  And  I  am  informed  by 
members  of  Parliament  who  watched  the  progress  of  the 
3 


30  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [n. 

Act,  that  the  responsibility  for  this  unusual  state  of 
things  rests,  not  with  the  Government,  but  with  the 
Legislature,  which  exhibited  a  singular  disposition  to 
accumulate  power  in  the  hands  of  the  future  Minister  of 
Education,  and  to  evade  the  more  troublesome  difficulties 
of  the  education  question  by  leaving  them  to  be  settled 
between  that  Minister  and  the  School  Boards. 

I  express  no  opinion  whether  it  is,  or  is  not,  desirable 
that  such  powers  of  controlling  all  the  School  Boards  in 
the  country  should  be  possessed  by  a  person  who  may  be, 
like  Mr.  Forster,  eminently  likely  to  use  these  powers 
justly  and  wisely,  but  who  also  may  be  quite  the  reverse. 
I  merely  wish  to  draw  attention  to  the  fact  that  such 
powers  are  given  to  the  Minister,  whether  he  be  fit  or 
unfit.  The  extent  of  these  powers  becomes  apparent 
when  the  other  sections  of  the  Act  referred  to  are  con- 
sidered. The  fourth  clause  of  the  seventh  section 
says  : — 

"  The  school  shall  be  conducted  in  accordance  -\vitli  the  conditions 
required  to  be  fulfilled  by  an  elementary  school  in  order  to  obtain  an 
annual  Parliamentary  grant." 

What  these  conditions  are  appears  from  the  following 
clauses  of  the  ninety-seventh  section  :- — 

"  The  conditions  required  to  be  fulfilled  by  an  elementary  school  in 
order  to  obtain  an  annual  Parliamentary  grant  shall  be  those  con- 
tained in  the  minutes  of  the  Education  Department  in  force  for  the 
time  being.  .  .  .  Provided  that  no  such  minute  of  the  Education 
Department,  not  in  force  at  the  time  of  the  passing  of  this  Act,  shall 
be  deemed  to  be  in  force  until  it  has  lain  for  not  less  than  one  month 
on  the  table  of  both  Houses  of  Parliament." 

Let  us  consider  how  this  will  work  in  practice.  A 
school  established  by  a  School  Board  may  receive  support 
from  three  sources — from  the  rates,  the  school  fees,  and 
the  Parliamentary  grant.  The  latter  may  be  as  great  as 
the  two  former  taken  together ;  and  as  it  may  be  assumed, 


IT.]  THE  SCHOOL  BOARDS.  37 

without  much  risk  of  error,  that  a  constant  pressure  will 
be  exerted  by  the  ratepayers  on  the  members  who  re- 
present them,  to  get  as  much  out  of  the  Government, 
and  as  little  out  of  the  rates,  as  possible,  the  School 
Boards  will  have  a  very  strong  motive  for  shaping  the 
education  they  give,  as  nearly  as  may  be,  on  the  model 
which  the  Education  Minister  offers  for  their  imitation, 
and  for  the  copying  of  which  he  is  prepared  to  pay. 

The  Revised  Code  did  not  compel  any  schoolmaster  to 
leave  off  teaching  anything ;  but,  by  the  very  simple  pro- 
cess of  refusing  to  pay  for  many  kinds  of  teaching,  it  has 
practically  put  an  end  to  them.  Mr.  Forster  is  said  to 
be  engaged  in  revising  the  Revised  Code  ;  a  successor  of 
his  may  re-revise  it — and  there  will  be  no  sort  of  check 
upon  these  revisions  and  counter-revisions,  except  the 
possibility  of  a  Parliamentary  debate,  when  the  revised, 
or  added,  minutes  are  laid  upon  the  table.  What  chance 
is  there  that  any  such  debate  will  take  place  on  a  matter 
of  detail  relating  to  elementary  education — a  subject 
with  which  members  of  the  Legislature,  having  been,  for 
the  most  part,  sent  to  our  public  schools  thirty  years 
ago,  have  not  the  least  practical  acquaintance,  and  for 
which  they  care  nothing,  unless  it  derives  a  political 
value  from  its  connection  with  sectarian  politics  ? 

I  cannot  but  think,  then,  that  the  School  Boards  will 
have  the  appearance,  but  not  the  reality,  of  freedom  of 
action,  in  regard  to  the  subject-matter  of  what  is  com- 
monly called  "secular"  education. 

As  respects  what  is  commonly  called  "  religious " 
education,  the  power  of  the  Minister  of  Education  is 
even  more  despotic.  An  interest,  almost  amounting  to 
pathos,  attaches  itself,  in  my  mind,  to  the  frantic  exer- 
tions which  are  at  present  going  on  in  almost  every 
school  division,  to  elect  certain  candidates  whose  names 
have  never  before  been  heard  of  in  connection  with 


38  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [n. 

education,  and  who  are  either  sectarian  partisans,  or 
nothing.  In  my  own  particular  division,  a  body  orga- 
nized ad  hoc  is  moving  heaven  and  earth  to  get  the 
seven  seats  filled  by  seven  gentlemen,  four  of  whom  are 
good  Churchmen,  and  three  no  less  good  Dissenters. 
But  why  should  this  seven  times  heated  fiery  furnace  of 
theological  zeal  be  so  desirous  to  shed  its  genial  warmth 
over  the  London  School  Board  ?  Can  it  be  that  these 
zealous  sectaries  mean  to  evade  the  solemn  pledge  given 
in  the  Act  ? 

"  No  religious  catechism  or  religious  formulary  which  is  distinctive 
of  any  particular  denomination  shall  be  taught  in  the  school." 

I  confess  I  should  have  thought  it  my  duty  to  reject 
any  such  suggestion,  as  dishonouring  to  a  number  of 
worthy  persons,  if  it  had  not  been  for  a  leading  article 
and  some  correspondence  which  appeared  in  the  Guardian 
of  November  9th,  1870. 

The  Guardian  is,  as  everybody  knows,  one  of  the 
best  of  the  "  religious  "  newspapers  ;  and,  personally.  I 
have  every  reason  to  speak  highly  of  the  fairness,  and 
indeed  kindness,  with  which  the  editor  is  good  enough 
to  deal  with  a  writer  who  must,  in  many  ways,  be  so 
objectionable  to  him  as  myself.  I  quote  the  following 
passages  from  a  leading  article  on  a  letter  of  mine, 
therefore,  with  all  respect,  and  with  a  genuine  conviction 
that  the  course  of  conduct  advocated  by  the  writer  must 
appear  to  him  in  a  very  different  light  from  that  under 
which  I  see  it : — 

"The  first  of  these  points  is  the  interpretation  which  Professor 
Huxley  puts  on  the  '  Cowper-Temple  clause.'  It  is,  in  fact,  that  which 
we  foretold  some  time  ago  as  likely  to  be  forced  upon  it  by  these  who 
think  with  him.  The  clause  itself  was  one  of  those  compromises 
which  it  is  very  difficult  to  define  or  to  maintain  logically.  On  the 
cne  side  was  the  simple  freedom  to  School  Boards  to  establish  what 
schools  they  pleased,  which  Mr.  Forster  originally  gave,  but  agaiust 


I,.]  THE  SCHOOL 

\vliich  the  Nonconformists  lifted  up  their  voTSS8pto8BR*wc^*lhey  con- 
ceived it  likely  to  give  too  much  power  to  the  Church.  On  the  other 
side  there  was  the  proposition  to  make  the  schools  secular — intelligible 
enough,  but  in  the  consideration  of  public  opinion  simply  impossible 
— and  there  was  the  vague  impracticable  idea,  which  Mr.  Gladstone 
thoroughly  tore  to  pieces,  of  enacting  that  the  teaching  of  all  school- 
masters in  the  new  schools  should  be  strictly  'undenominational.' 
The  Cowper-Temple  clause  was,  we  repeat,  proposed  simply  to  tide 
over  the  difficulty.  It  was  to  satisfy  the  Nonconformists  and  the 
1  unsectarian,'  as  distinct  from  the  secular  party  of  the  League,  by  for- 
bidding all  distinctive  'catechisms  and  formularies,'  which  might  have 
the  effect  of  openly  assigning  the  schools  to  this  or  that  religious  body. 
It  refused,  at  the  same  time,  to  attempt  the  impossible  task  of  defining 
what  was  undenominational ;  and  its  author  even  contended,  if  we 
understood  him  correctly,  that  it  would  in  no  way,  even  indirectly, 
interfere  with  the  substantial  teaching  of  any  master  in  any  school. 
This  assertion  we  always  believed  to  be  untenable  ;  we  could  not  see 
how,  in  the  face  of  this  clause,  a  distinctly  denominational  tone  could 
be  honestly  given  to  schools  nominally  general.  But  beyond  this  mere 
suggestion  of  an  attempt  at  a  general  tone  of  comprehensiveness  in 
religious  teaching  it  was  not  intended  to  go,  and  only  because  such  was 
its  limitation  was  it  accepted  by  the  Government  and  by  the  House. 

"  But  now  we  are  told  that  it  is  to  be  construed  as  doing  precisely 
that  which  it  refused  to  do.  A  'formulary,'  it  seems,  is  a  collection 
of  formulas,  and  formulas  are  simply  propositions  of  whatever  kind 
touching  religious  faith.  All  such  propositions,  if  they  cannot  be 
accepted  by  all  Christian  denominations,  are  to  be  proscribed;  and  it 
is  added  significantly  that  the  Jews  also  are  a  denomination,  and  so 
that  any  teaching  distinctively  Christian  is  perhaps  to  be  excluded, 
lest  it  should  interfere  with  their  freedom  and  rights.  Are  we  then  to 
fall  back  on  the  simple  reading  of  the  letter  of  the  Bible  1  No  !  this, 
it  is  granted,  would  be  an  'unworthy  pretence.'  The  teacher  is  to 
give  '  grammatical,  geographical,  or  historical  explanations  ; '  but  he  is 
to  keep  clear  of  '  theology  proper/  because,  as  Professor  Huxley  takes 
great  pains  to  prove,  there  is  no  theological  teaching  which  is  not 
opposed  by  some  sect  or  other,  from  Roman  Catholicism  on  the  one 
hand  to  Unitarianism  on  the  other.  It  was  not,  perhaps,  hard  to  see 
that  this  difficulty  would  be  started  ;  and  to  those  who,  like  Professor 
Huxley,  look  at  it  theoretically,  without  much  practical  experience  of 
schools,  it  may  appear  serious  or  unanswerable.  But  there  is  very 
little  in  it  practically ;  when  it  is  faced  determinately  and  handled 
firmly,  it  will  soon  shrink  into  its  true  dimensions.  The  class  who  are 
least  frightened  at  it  aro  the  school-teachers,  simply  because  they 
know  most  about  it.  It  is  quite  clear  that  the  school-managers  must 


40  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  |n. 

be  cautioned  against  allowing  their  schools  to  fte  made  places  of 
proselytism :  but  \vhen  this  is  done,  the  case  is  simple  enough. 
Leave  the  masters  under  this  general  understanding  to  teach  freely  ;  if 
there  is  ground  of  complaint,  let  it  be  made,  but  leave  the  onus  pro- 
bandi  on  the  objectors.  For  extreme  peculiarities  of  belief  or  unbelief 
there  is  the  Conscience  Clause  ;  as  to  the  mass  of  parents,  they  will  be 
more  anxious  to  have  religion  taught  than  afraid  of  its  assuming  this 
or  that  particular  shade.  They  will  trust  the  school-managers  and 
teachers  till  they  have  reason  to  distrust  them,  and  experience  has 
shown  that  they  may  trust  them  safely  enough.  Any  attempt  to 
throw  the  burden  of  making  the  teaching  undenominational  upon  the 
managers  must  be  sternly  resisted  :  it  is  simply  evading  the  intentions 
of  the  Act  in  an  elaborate  attempt  to  carry  them  out.  We  thank 
Professor  Huxley  for  the  warning.  To  bo  forewarned  is  to  be  fore- 
armed." 

A  good  deal  of  light  seems  to  me  to  be  thrown  on  the 
practical  significance  of  the  opinions  expressed  in  the 
foregoing  extract  by  the  following  interesting  letter, 
which  appeared  in  the  same  paper  : — 

"  SIR, — I  venture  to  send  to  you  the  substance  of  a  correspondence 
with  the  Education  Department  upon  the  question  of  the  lawfulness 
of  religious  teaching  in  rate  schools  under  section  14  (2)  of  the  Act. 
I  asked  whether  the  words  *  which  is  distinctive/  &c.,  taken  gram- 
matically as  limiting  the  prohibition  of  any  religious  formulary,  might 
bo  construed  as  allowing  (subject,  however,  to  the  other  provisions  of 
the  Act)  any  religious  formulary  common  to  any  two  denominations 
anywhere  in  England  to  be  taught  in  such  schools  ;  and  if  practically 
the  limit  could  not  be  so  extended,  but  would  have  to  be  fixed  accord- 
ing to  the  special  circumstances  of  each  district,  then  what  degree  of 
general  acceptance  in  a  district  would  exempt  such  a  formulary  from 
the  prohibition  ?  The  answer  to  this  was  as  follows  : — '  It  was  under- 
stood, when  clause  14  of  the  Education  Act  was  discussed  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  that,  according  to  a  well-known  rule  of  interpreting  Acts 
of  Parliament,  "denomination"  must  be  held  to  include  "denomina- 
tions." When  any  dispute  is  referred  to  the  Education  Department 
under  the  last  paragraph  of  section  16,  it  will  be  dealt  with  according 
to  the  circumstances  of  the  case.' 

"  Upon  my  asking  further  if  I  might  hence  infer  that  Hie  lawfulness 
of  teaching  any  religious  formulary  in  a  rate  school  would  thus  depend 
exclusively  on  local  circumstances,  and  would  accordingly  be  so  decided 
by  the  Education  Department  in  case  of  dispute,  I  was  informed  in 


ii.]  THE  SCHOOL  BOARDS.  41 

explanation  that  '  their  lordships' '  letter  was  intended  to  convey  to 
me  that  no  general  rule,  beyond  that  stated  in  the  first  paragraph  of 
their  letter,  could  at  present  be  laid  down  by  them;  and  that  their 
decision  in  each  particular  case  must  depend  on  the  special  circum- 
stances accompanying  it. 

"  I  think  it  would  appear  from  this  that  it  may  yet  be  in  many 
cases  both  lawful  and  expedient  to  teach  religious  formularies  in  rate 
schools.  "  H.  I. 

"  STEYNING,  November  5,  1870." 

Of  course  I  do  not  mean  to  suggest  that  the  editor  of 
the  Guardian  is  bound  by  the  opinions  of  his  corre- 
spondent ;  but  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  I  do  not 
misrepresent  him,  when  I  say  that  he  also  thinks  "  that 
it  may  yet  be,  in  many  cases,  both  lawful  and  expedient 
to  teach  religious  formularies  in  rate  schools  under  these 
circumstances." 

It  is  not  uncharitable,  therefore,  to  assume  that,  the 
express  words  of  the  Act  of  Parliament  notwithstand- 
ing, all  the  sectaries  who  are  toiling  so  hard  for  seats  in 
the  London  School  Board  have  the  lively  hope  of  the 
gentleman  from  Steyning,  that  it  may  be  c<  both  lawful 
and  expedient  to  teach  religious  formularies  in  rate 
schools ;  "  and  that  they  mean  to  do  their  utmost  to  bring 
this  happy  consummation  about.1 

Now  the  pathetic  emotion  to  which  I  have  referred, 
as  accompanying  my  contemplations  of  the  violent 
struggles  of  so  many  excellent  persons,  is  caused  by  the 

1  A  passage  in  an  article  on  the  "  Working  of  the  Education  Act/'  in  the 
Saturday  Review  for  Nov.  19,  1870,  completely  justifies  this  anticipation  of 
the  line  of  action  which  the  sectaries  mean  to  take.  After  commending 
the  Liverpool  compromise,  the  writer  goes  on  to  say : — 

"  If  this  plan  is  fairly  adopted  in  Liverpool,  tlie  fourteenth  clause  of  the  Act 
will  in  effect  be  restored  to  its  original  form,  and  the  majority  of  the  ratepayers 
in  each  district  be  permitted  to  decide  to  what  denomination  the  school  shall 
belong." 

In  a  previous  paragraph  the  writer  speaks  of  a  possible  "  mistrust "  of  one 
another  by  tlie  members  of  the  Board,  and  seems  to  anticipate  "  accusations  of 
dishonesty."  If  any  of  the  members  of  the  Board  adopt  his  views,  I  think  it 
highly  probable  that  lie  may  turn  out  to  be  a  true  prophet. 


42  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [n. 

circumstance  that,  so  far  as  I  can  judge,  their  labour  is 
in  vain. 

Supposing  that  the  London  School  Board  contains,  as 
it  probably  will  do,  a  majority  of  sectaries  ;  and  that  they 
carry  over  the  heads  of  a  minority,  a  resolution  that 
certain  theological  formulas,  about  which  they  all  happen 
to  agree, — say,  for  example,  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity, 
—shall  be  taught  in  the  schools.  Do  they  fondly  imagine 
that  the  minority  will  not  at  once  dispute  their  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Act,  and  appeal  to  the  Education  Department 
to  settle  that  dispute  ?  And  if  so,  do  they  suppose  that 
any  Minister  of  Education,  who  wants  to  keep  his  place, 
will  tighten  boundaries  which  the  Legislature  has  left 
loose  ;  and  will  give  a  "  final  decision  "  which  shall  be 
offensive  to  every  Unitarian  and  to  every  Jew  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  besides  creating  a  precedent  which 
will  afterwards  be  used  to  the  injury  of  every  Noncon- 
formist ?  The  editor  of  the  Guardian  tells  his  friends 
sternly  to  resist  every  attempt  to  throw  the  burden  of 
making  the  teaching  undenominational  on  the  managers, 
and  thanks  me  for  the  warning  I  have  given  him.  I 
return  the  thanks,  with  interest,  for  his  warning,  as  to 
the  course  the  party  he  represents  intends  to  pursue,  and 
for  enabling  me  thus  to  draw  public  attention  to  a 
perfectly  constitutional  and  effectual  mode  of  check- 
mating them. 

And,  in  truth,  it  is  wonderful  to  note  the  surprising 
entanglement  into  which  our  able  editor  gets  himself  in 
the  struggle  between  his  native  honesty  and  judgment 
and  the  necessities  of  his  party.  "  "We  could  not  see/' 
says  he,  "  in  the  face  of  this  clause  how  a  distinct  de- 
nominational tone  could  be  honestly  given  to  schools 
nominally  general."  There  speaks  the  honest  and  clear- 
headed man.  "Any  attempt  to  throw  the  burden  of 
making  the  teaching  undenominational  must  be  sternly 


n.]  THE  SCHOOL  BOA1WS.  43 

resisted."  There  speaks  the  advocate  holding  a  brief  for 
his  party.  "  Verily/'  as  Trinculo  says,  "  the  monster  hath 
two  mouths  :  "  the  one,  the  forward  mouth,  tells  us  very 
justly  that  the  teaching  cannot  "honestly "be  "  distinctly 
denominational ; "  but  the  other,  the  backward  mouth, 
asserts  that  it  must  by  no  manner  of  means  be  "  undeno- 
minational." Putting  the  two  utterances  together,  I  can 
only  interpret  them  to  mean  that  the  teaching  is  to 
be  "  indistinctly  denominational."  If  the  editor  of  the 
Guardian  had  not  shown  signs  of  anger  at  my  use  of  the 
term  "theological  fog,"  I  should  have  been  tempted  to 
suppose  it  must  have  been  what  he  had  in  his  mind, 
under  the  name  of  "indistinct  denominationalism." 
But  this  reading  being  plainly  inadmissible,  I  can  only 
imagine  that  he  inculcates  the  teaching  of  formulas 
common  to  a  number  of  denominations. 

But  the  Education  Department  has1  already  told  the 
gentleman  from  Steyning  that  any  such  proceeding  will 
be  illegal.  "According  to  a  well-known  rule  of  inter- 
preting Acts  of  Parliament,  '  denomination '  would  be 
held  to  include  '  denominations/  "  In  other  words,  we 
must  read  the  Act  thus  : — 

"  No  religious  catechism  or  religious  formulary  which 
is  distinctive  of  any  particular  denominations  shall  be 
taught." 

Thus  we  are  really  very  much  indebted  to  the  editor 
of  the  Guardian  and  his  correspondent.  The  one  has 
shown  us  that  the  sectaries  mean  to  try  to  get  as  much 
denominational  teaching  as  they  can  agree  upon,  among 
themselves,  forced  into  the  elementary  schools  ;  while 
the  other  has  obtained  a  formal  declaration  from  the 
Education  Department  that  any  such  attempt  will 
contravene  the  Act  of  Parliament,  and  that,  therefore, 
the  unsectarian,  law-abiding  members  of  the  School 
Boards  may  safely  reckon  upon  bringing  down  upon 


44  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [n. 

their   opponents   the   heavy   hand   of    the   Minister   of 
Education.1 

So  much  for  the  powers  of  the  School  Boards.  Limited 
as  they  seem  to  be,  it  by  no  means  follows  that  such 
Boards,  if  they  are  composed  of  intelligent  and  practical 
men,  really  more  in  earnest  about  education  than  about 
sectarian  squabbles,  may  not  exert  a  very  great  amount  of 
influence.  And,  from  many  circumstances,  this  is  espe- 
cially likely  to  be  the  case  with  the  London  School  Board, 
which,  if  it  conducts  itself  wisely,  may  become  a  true 
educational  parliament,  as  subordinate  in  authority  to  the 
Minister  of  Education,  theoretically,  as  the  Legislature  is 
to  the  Crown,  and  yet,  like  the  Legislature,  possessed 
of  great  practical  authority.  And  I  suppose  that  no 
Minister  of  Education  would  be  other  than  glad  to  have 
the  aid  of  the  deliberations  of  such  a  body,  or  fail  to  pay 
careful  attention  to  its  recommendations. 

What,  then,  ought  to  be  the  nature  and  scope  of  the 
education  which  a  School  Board  should  endeavour  to  give 
to  every  child  under  its  influence,  and  for  which  it  should 
try  to  obtain  the  aid  of  the  Parliamentary  grants  ?  In 
my  judgment  it  should  include  at  least  the  following 
kinds  of  instruction  and  of  discipline  : — 

1.  Physical  training  and  drill,  as  part  of  the  regular 
business  of  the  school. 

It  is  impossible  to  insist  too  much  on  the  importance 
of  this  part  of  education  for  the  children  of  the  poor  of 
great  towns.  All  the  conditions  of  their  lives  are  un- 
favourable to  their  physical  well-being.  They  are  badly 

1  Since  this  paragraph  was  written,  Mr.  Forster,  in  speaking  at  the  Birkbeck 
Institution,  has  removed  all  doubt  as  to  what  his  "  final  decision  "  will  be  in  the 
case  of  such  disputes  being  referred  to  him  : — "  I  have  the  fullest  confidence 
that  in  the  reading  and  explaining  of  the  Bible,  what  the  children  will  be 
taught  will  be  the  great  truths  of  Christian  life  and  conduct,  which  all  of  us 
desire  they  should  know,  and  that  no  eifort  will  be  made  to  cram  into  their  poor 
little  minds,  theological  dogmas  which  their  tender  age  prevents  them  .from 
understanding." 


ii.]  THE  SCHOOL  BOARDS.  43 

lodged,  badly  housed,  badly  fed,  and  live  from  one  year's 
end  to  another  in  bad  air,  without  chance  of  a  change. 
They  have  no  play-grounds ;  they  amuse  themselves 
with  marbles  and  chuck-farthing,  instead  of  cricket  or 
harc-and-hounds ;  and  if  it  were  not  for  the  wonderful 
instinct  which  leads  all  poor  children  of  tender  years 
to  run  under  the  feet  of  cab-horses  whenever  they  can, 
I  know  not  how  they  would  learn  to  use  their  limbs 
with  agility. 

Now  there  is  no  real  difficulty  about  teaching  drill 
and  the  simpler  kinds  of  gymnastics.-  It  is  done  ad- 
mirably well,  for  example,  in  the  North  Surrey  Union 
schools ;  and  a  year  or  two  ago,  when  I  had  an  oppor- 
tunity of  inspecting  these  schools,  I  was  greatly  struck 
with  the  effect  of  such  training  upon  the  poor  little 
waifs  and  strays  of  humanity,  mostly  picked  out  of  the 
gutter,  who  are  being  made  into  cleanly,  healthy,  and 
useful  members  of  society  in  that  excellent  institution. 

"Whatever  doubts  people  may  entertain  about  the 
efficacy  of  natural  selection,  there  can  be  none  about 
artificial  selection ;  and  the  breeder  who  should  attempt 
to  make,  or  keep  up,  a  fine  stock  of  pigs,  or  sheep,  under 
the  conditions  to  which  the  children  of  the  poor  are 
exposed,  would  be  the  laughing-stock  even  of  the  bucolic 
mind.  Parliament  has  already  done  something  in  this 
direction,  by  declining  to  be  an  accomplice  in  the  as- 
phyxiation of  school  children.  It  refuses  to  make  any 
grant  to  a  school  in  which  the  cubical  contents  of  the 
school-room  are  inadequate  to  allow  of  proper  respiration. 
I  should  like  to  see  it  make  another  step  in  the  same 
direction,  and  either  refuse  to  give  a  grant  to  a  school 
in  which  physical  training  is  not  a  part  of  the  pro- 
gramme, or,  at  any  rate,  offer  to  pay  upon  such  training. 
If  something  of  the  kind  is  not  done,  the  English 
physique,  which  has  been,  and  is  still,  on  the  whole,  a 


46  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES,  [n. 

grand  one,  will  become  as  extinct  as  the  dodo,  in  the 
great  towns. 

And  then  the  moral  and  intellectual  effect  of  drill,  as 
an  introduction  to,  and  aid  of,  all  other  sorts  of  training, 
must  not  be  overlooked.  If  you  want  to  break  in  a  colt, 
surely  the  first  thing  to  do  is  to  catch  him  and  get  him 
quietly  to  face  his  trainer ;  to  know  his  voice  and  bear 
his  hand ;  to  learn  that  colts  have  something  else  to  do 
with  their  heels  than  to  kick  them  up  whenever  they 
feel  so  inclined  ;  and  to  discover  that  the  dreadful  human 
figure  has  no  desire  to  devour,  or  even  to  beat  him,  but^ 
that,  in  case  of  attention  and  obedience,  he  may  hopefi 
for  patting  and  even  a  sieve  of  oats. 

But,  your  "street  Arabs,"  and  other  neglected  poor 
children,  are  rather  worse  and  wilder  than  colts  ;  for  the 
reason  that  the  horse-colt  has  only  his  animal  instincts 
in  him,  and  his  mother,  the  mare,  has  been  always  tender 
over  him,  and  never  came  home  drunk  and  kicked  him 
in  her  life ;  while  the  man-colt  is  inspired  by  that  very 
real  devi],  perverted  manhood,  and  his  mother  may  have 
done  all  that  and  more.  So,  on  the  whole,  it  may  pro- 
bably be  even  more  expedient  to  begin  your  attempt  to 
get  at  the  higher  nature  of  the  child,  than  at  that  of  the 
colt,  from  the  physical  side. 

2.  Next  in  order  to  physical  training  I  put  the  instruc- 
tion of  children,  and  especially  of  girls,  in  the  elements 
of  household  work  and  of  domestic  economy ;  in  the  first 
place  for  their  own  sakes,  and  in  the  second  for  that  of 
their  future  employers. 

Everyone  who  knows  anything  of  the  life  of  the 
English  poor  is  aware  of  the  misery  and  waste  caused 
by  their  want  of  knowledge  of  domestic  economy,  and 
by  their  lack  of  habits  of  frugality  and  method.  I 
suppose  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  a  poor  French- 
woman would  make  the  money  which  the  wife  of  a  poor 


ii.]  THE  SCHOOL  BOA1WS.  47 

Englishman  spends  in  food  go  twice  as  far,  and  at  the 
same  time  turn  out  twice  as  palatable  a  dinner.  Why 
Englishmen,  who  are  so  notoriously  fond  of  good  living, 
should  be  so  helplessly  incompetent  in  the  art  of  cookery, 
is  one  of  the  great  mysteries  of  nature  ;  but  from  the 
varied  abominations  of  the  railway  refreshment-rooms  to 
the  monotonous  dinners  of  the  poor,  English  feeding  is 
either  wasteful  or  nasty,  or  both. 

And  as  to  domestic  service,  the  groans  of  the  house- 
wives of  England  ascend  to  heaven !  In  five  cases  out 
of  six,  the  girl  who  takes  a  "  place "  has  to  be  trained 
ly  her  mistress  in  the  first  rudiments  of  decency  and 
crder;  and  it  is  a  mercy  if  she  does  not  turn  up  her 
nose  at  anything  like  Jhe  mention  of  an  honest  and 
proper  economy.  Thousands  of  young  girls  are  said 
to  starve,  or  worse,  yearly  in  London ;  and  at  the  same 
time  thousands  of  mistresses  of  households  are  ready 
to  pay  high  wages  for  a  decent  housemaid,  or  cook, 
or  a  fair  workwoman ;  and  can  by  no  means  get  what 
they  want. 

Surely,  if  the  elementary  schools  are  worth  anything, 
they  may  put  an  end  to  a  state  of  things  which  is  de- 
moralizing the  poor,  while  it  is  wasting  the  lives  of  those 
better  off  in  small  worries  and  annoyances. 

3.  But  the  boys  and  girls  for  whose  education  the 
School  Boards  have  to  provide,  have  not  merely  to  dis- 
charge domestic  duties,  but  each  of  them  is  a  member 
of  a  social  and  political  organization  of  great  complexity, 
and  has,  in  future  life,  to  fit  himself  into  that  organi- 
zation, or  be  crushed  by  it.  To  this  end  it  is  surely 
needful,  not  only  that  they  should  be  made  acquainted 
with  the  elementary  laws  of  conduct,  but  that  their 
affections  should  be  trained,  so  as  to  love  with  all  their 
hearts  that  conduct  which  tends  to  the  attainment  of 
the  highest  good  for  themselves  and  their  fellow-men, 


48  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [11. 

and  to  hate  with  all  their  hearts  that  opposite  course  of 
action  which  is  fraught  with  evil. 

So  far  as  the  laws  of  conduct  are  determined  by  the 
intellect,  I  apprehend  that  they  belong  to  science,  and  to 
that  part  of  science  which  is  called  morality.  But  the 
engagement  of  the  affections  in  favour  of  that  particular 
kind  of  conduct  which  we  call  good,  seems  to  me  to  be 
something  quite  beyond  mere  science.  And  I  cannot 
but  think  that  it,  together  with  the  awe  and  reverence, 
which  have  no  kinship  with  base  fear,  but  arise  whenever 
one  tries  to  pierce  below  the  surface  of  things,  whether 
they  be  material  or  spiritual,  constitutes  all  that  has  any 
unchangeable  reality  in  religion. 

And  just  as  I  think  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  confound 
the  science,  morality,  with  the  affection,  religion ;  so  do 
I  conceive  it  to  be  a  most  lamentable  and  mischievous 
error,  that  the  science,  theology,  is  so  confounded  in  the 
minds  of  many — indeed,  I  might  say,  of  the  majority 
of  men. 

I  do  not  express  any  opinion  as  to  whether  theology 
is  a  true  science,  or  whether  it  does  not  come  under  the 
apostolic  definition  of  "  science  falsely  so  called  ; "  though 
I  may  be  permitted  to  express  the  belief  that  if  the 
Apostle  to  whom  that  much  misapplied  phrase  is  due 
could  make  the  acquaintance  of  much  of  modern  theo- 
logy, he  would  not  hesitate  a  moment  in  declaring  that 
it  is  exactly  what  he  meant  the  words  to  denote. 

But  it  is  at  any  rate  conceivable,  that  the  nature  of 
the  Deity,  and  His  relations  to  the  universe,  and  more 
especially  to  mankind,  are  capable  of  being  ascertained, 
either  inductively  or  deductively,  or  by  both  processes. 
And,  if  they  have  been  ascertained,  then  a  body  of  science 
has  been  formed  which  is  very  properly  called  theology. 

Further,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  affection  for  the 
Being  thus  defined  and  described  by  theologic  science 


IT.]  THE  SCHOOL  BOA1W&  40 

would  be  properly  termed  religion ;  but  it  would  not 
be  the  whole  of  religion.  The  affection  for  the  ethical 
ideal  defined  by  moral  science  would  claim  equal  if  not 
superior  rights.  For  suppose  theology  established  the 
existence  of  an  evil  deity — and  some  theologies,  even 
Christian  ones,  have  come  very  near  this, — is  the  religious 
affection  to  be  transferred  from  the  ethical  ideal  to 
any  such  omnipotent  demon  ?  I  trow  not.  Better  a 
thousand  times  that  the  human  race  should  perish  under 
his  thunderbolts  than  it  should  say,  "Evil,  be  thou 
my  good." 

There  is  nothing  new,  that  I  know  of,  in  this  state- 
ment of  the  relations  of  religion  with  the  science  of 
morality  on  the  one  hand  and  that  of  theology  on  the 
other.  But  I  believe  it  to  be  altogether  true,  and  very 
needful,  at  this  time,  to  be  clearly  and  emphatically 
recognized  as  such,  by  those  who  have  to  deal  with  the 
education  question. 

We  are  divided  into  two  parties — the  advocates  of 
so-called  "religious"  teaching  on  the  one  hand,  and 
those  of  so-called  "  secular  "  teaching  on  the  other.  And 
both  parties  seem  to  me  to  be  not  only  hopelessly  wrong, 
but  in  such  a  position  that  if  either  succeeded  completely, 
it  would  discover,  before  many  years  were  over,  that  it 
had  made  a  great  mistake  and  done  serious  evil  to  the 
cause  of  education. 

For,  leaving  aside  the  more  far-seeing  minority  on 
each  side,  what  the  "religious"  party  is  crying  for  is 
mere  theology,  under  the  name  of  religion ;  while  the 
"secularists"  have  unwisely  and  wrongfully  admitted 
the  assumption  of  their  opponents,  and  demand  the 
abolition  of  all  "  religious "  teaching,  when  they  only 
want  to  be  free  of  theology — Burning  your  ship  to  get 
rid  of  the  cockroaches ! 

But  my  belief  is,  that  no  human  being,  and  no  society 


50  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [ir. 

composed  of  human  beings,  ever  did,  or  ever  will,  come 
to  much,  unless  their  conduct  was  governed  and  guided 
by  the  love  of  some  ethical  ideal.  Undoubtedly,  you, 
gutter  child  may  be  converted  by  mere  intellectual  dri1 
into  "  the  subtlest  of  all  the  beasts  of  the  field  ; "  but  \ 
know  what  has  become  of  the  original  of  that  descrip- 
tion, and  there  is  no  need  to  increase  the  number  of 
those  who  imitate  him  successfully  without  being  aided 
by  the  rates.  And  if  I  were  compelled  to  choose  for  one 
of  my  own  children,  between  a  school  in  which  real 
religious  instruction  is  given,  and  one  without  it,  I  should 
prefer  the  former,  even  though  the  child  might  have  to 
take  a  good  deal  of  theology  with  it.  Nine-tenths  of  a 
dose  of  bark  is  mere  half-rotten  wood ;  but  one  swallows 
it  for  the  sake  of  the  particles  of  quinine,  the  beneficial 
effect  of  which  may  be  weakened,  but  is  not  destroyed, 
by  the  wooden  dilution,  unless  in  a  few  eases  of  excep- 
tionally tender  stomachs. 

Hence,  when  the  great  mass  of  the  English  people 
declare  that  they  want  to  have  the  children  in  the 
elementary  schools  taught  the  Bible,  and  when  it  is  plain 
from  the  terms  of  the  Act,  the  debates  in  and  out  of 
Parliament,  and  especially  the  emphatic  declarations  of 
the  Vice-President  of  the  Council,  that  it  was  intended 
that  such  Bible-reading  should  be  permitted,  unless  good 
cause  for  prohibiting  it  could  be  shown,  I  do  not  see 
what  reason  there  is  for  opposing  that  wish.  Certainly, 
I,  individually,  could  with  no  shadow  of  consistency 
oppose  the  teaching  of  the  children  of  other  people  to 
do  that  which  my  own  children  are  taught  to  do.  And, 
even  if  the  reading  the  Bible  were  not,  as  I  think  it  is, 
consonant  with  political  reason  and  justice,  and  with  a 
desire  to  act  in  the  spirit  of  the  education  measure,  I 
am  disposed  to  think  it  might  still  be  well  to  read  that 
book  in  the  elementary  schools. 


n.j  THE  SCHOOL  BOARDS.  51 

I   have    always  been   strongly  in   favour    of   secular 
education,  in  the  sense  of  education  without  theology ; 
•rbut  I  must  confess  I  have  been  no  less  seriously  per- 
?  jlexed  to  know  by  what  practical  measures  the  religious 
Deling,  which  is  the  essential  basis  of  conduct,  was  to 
ue  kept  up,  in  the  present  utterly  chaotic  state  of  opinion 
on  these  matters,  without  the  use  of  the  Bible.     The 
Pagan  moralists  lack  life  and  colour,  and  even  the  noble 
Stoic,  Marcus  Antoninus,  is  too  high  and  refined  for  an 
ordinary  child.     Take  the  Bible  as  a  whole ;  make  the 
severest  deductions  which,  fair  criticism  can  dictate  for 
shortcomings  and  positive  errors ;  eliminate,  as  a  sensible 
lay-teacher  would  do,  if  left  to  himself,  all  that  it  is  not 
desirable  for  children  to  occupy  themselves  with ;  and 
there  still  remains  in  this  old  literature  a  vast  residuum 
of  moral  beauty  and  grandeur.     And  then  consider  the 
great  historical  fact  that,  for  three  centuries,  this  book 
has  been  woven  into  the  life  of  all  that  is  best  and 
noblest   in   English   history ;    that  it   has   become   the 
national  epic  of  Britain,  and  is  as  familiar  to  noble  and 
simple,  from  John-o'- Groat's  House  to  Land's  End,  as 
Dante  and  Tasso  once  were  to  the  Italians ;  that  it  is 
written  in  the  noblest  and  purest  English,  and  abounds 
in  exquisite  beauties  of  mere  literary  form  ;  and,  finally, 
that  it  forbids  the  veriest  hind  who  never  left  his  village 
to  be  ignorant  of  the  existence  of  other  countries  and 
other  civilizations,  and  of  a  great  past,  stretching  back 
to  the  furthest  limits  of  the  oldest  nations  in  the  world. 
By  the  study  of  what  other  book  could  children  be  so 
much  humanized  and  made  to  feel  that  each  figure  in 
that  vast  historical  procession  fills,  like  themselves,  but 
a  momentary  space  in  the  interval  between  two  eterni- 
ties ;  and  earns  the  blessings  or  the  curses  of  all  time, 
according  to  its  effort  to  do  good  and  hate  evil,  even  as 
they  also  are  earning  their  payment  for  their  work  ? 


52  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [n. 

On  the  whole,  then,  I  am  in  favour  of  reading  the 
Bible,  with  such  grammatical,  geographical,  and  historical 
explanations  by  a  lay-teacher  as  may  be  needful,  with 
rigid  exclusion  of  any  further  theological  teaching  than 
that  contained  in  the  Bible  itself.  And  in  stating  what 
this  is,  the  teacher  would  do  well  not  to  go  beyond  the 
precise  words  of  the  Bible ;  for  if  he  does,  he  will,  in 
the  first  place,  undertake  a  task  beyond  his  strength, 
seeing  that  all  the  Jewish  and  Christian  sects  have  been 
at  work  upon  that  subject  for  more  than  two  thousand 
years,  and  have  not  yet  arrived,  and  are  not  in  the  least 
likely  to  arrive,  at  an  agreement ;  and,  in  the  second 
place,  he  will  certainly  begin  to  teach  something  dis- 
tinctively denominational,  and  thereby  come  into  violent 
collision  with  the  Act  of  Parliament. 

4.  The  intellectual  training  to  be  given  in  the  elemen- 
tary schools  must  of  course,  in  the  first  place,  consist  in 
learning  to  use  the  means  of  acquiring  knowledge,  or 
reading,  writing,  and  arithmetic  ;  and  it  will  be  a  great 
matter  to  teach  reading  so  completely  that  the  act  shall 
have  become  easy  and  pleasant.  If  reading  remains 
"  hard,"  that  accomplishment  will  not  be  much  resorted 
to  for  instruction,  and  still  less  for  amusement — which 
last  is  one  of  its  most  valuable  uses  to  hard-worked 
people. 

But  along  with  a  due  proficiency  in  the  use  of  the 
means  of  learning,  a  certain  amount  of  knowledge,  of 
intellectual  discipline,  and  of  artistic  training  should  be 
conveyed  in  the  elementary  schools ;  and  in  this  direc- 
tion— for  reasons  which  I  am  afraid  to  repeat,  having 
urged  them  so  often — I  can  conceive  no  subject-matter 
of  education  so  appropriate  and  so  important  as  the 
rudiments  of  physical  science,  with  drawing,  modelling, 
and  singing.  Not  only  would  such  teaching  afford  the 
best  possible  preparation  for  the  technical  schools  about 


IL]  THE  SCHOOL  BOARDS.  53 

which  so  much  is  now  said,  but  the  organization  for 
carrying  it  into  effect  already  exists.  The  Science  and 
Art  Department,  the  operations  of  which  have  already 
attained  considerable  magnitude,  not  only  offers  to 
examine  and  pay  the  results  of  such  examination  in 
elementary  science  and  art,  but  it  provides  what  is  still 
more  important,  viz.  a  means  of  giving  children  of  high 
natural  ability,  who  are  jirst  as  abundant  among  the 
poor  as  among  the  rich,  a  helping  hand.  A  good  old 
proverb  tells  us  that  "  One  should  not  take  a  razor  to 
cut  a  block  : "  the  razor  is  soon  spoiled,  and  the  block  is 
not  so  well  cut  as  it  would  be  with  a  hatchet.  But  it  is 
worse  economy  to  prevent  a  possible  Watt  from  being 
anything  but  a  stoker,  or  to  give  a  possible  Faraday  no 
chance  of  doing  anything  but  to  bind  books.  Indeed, 
the  loss  in  such  cases  of  mistaken  vocation  has  no 
measure ;  it  is  absolutely  infinite  and  irreparable.  And 
among  the  arguments  in  favour  of  the  interference  of 
the  State  in  education,  none  seems  to  be  stronger  than 
this — that  it  is  the  interest  of  every  one  that  ability 
should  be  neither  wasted,  nor  misapplied,  by  any  one  ; 
and,  therefore,  that  every  one's  representative,  the  State, 
is  necessarily  fulfilling  the  wishes  of  its  constituents 
when  it  is  helping  the  capacities  to  reach  their  proper 
places. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  scheme  of  education  here 
sketched  is  too  large  to  be  effected  in  the  time  during 
which  the  children  will  remain  at  school ;  and,  secondly, 
that  even  if  this  objection  did  not  exist,  it  would  cost 
too  much. 

I  attach  no  importance  whatever  to  the  first  objection 
until  the  experiment  has  been  fairly  tried.  Considering 
how  much  catechism,  lists  of  the  kings  of  Israel, 
geography  of  Palestine,  and  the  like,  children  are  made 
to  swallow  now,  I  cannot  believe  there  will  be  any 


54  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [IT. 

difficulty  in  inducing  them  to  go  through  the  physical 
training,  which  is  more  than  half  play  ;  or  the  instruc- 
tion in  household  work,  or  in  those  duties  to  one  another 
and  to  themselves,  which  have  a  daily  and  hourly 
practical  interest.  That  children  take  kindly  to  elemen- 
tary science  and  art  no  one  can  doubt  who  has  tried 
the  experiment  properly.  And  if  Bible-reading  is  not 
accompanied  by  constraint  and  solemnity,  as  if  it  were 
a  sacramental  operation,  I  do  not  believe  there  is  any- 
thing in  which  children  take  more  pleasure.  At  least 
I  know  that  some  of  the  pleasantest  recollections  of  my 
childhood  are  connected  with  the  voluntary  study  of  an 
ancient  Bible  which  belonged  to  my  grandmother.  There 
were  splendid  pictures  in  it,  to  be  sure ;  but  I  recollect 
little  or  nothing  about  them  save  a  portrait  of  the  high 
priest  in  his  vestments.  What  come  vividly  back  on 
my  mind  are  remembrances  of  my  delight  in  the 
histories  of  Joseph  and  of  David ;  and  of  my  keen 
appreciation  of  the  chivalrous  kindness  of  Abraham 
in  his  dealings  with  Lot.  Like  a  sudden  flash  there 
returns  back  upon  me,  my  utter  scorn  of  the  pettifogging 
meanness  of  Jacob,  and  my  sympathetic  grief  over  the 
heartbreaking  lamentation  of  the  cheated  Esau,  "  Hast 
thou  not  a  blessing  for  me  also,  0  my  father  ? "  And  I 
see,  as  in  a  cloud,  pictures  of  the  grand  phantasmagoria 
of  the  Book  of  Eevelation. 

I  enumerate,  as  they  issue,  the  childish  impressions 
which  come  crowding  out  of  the  pigeon-holes  in  my 
brain,  in  which  they  have  lain  almost  undisturbed  for 
forty  years.  I  prize  them  as  an  evidence  that  a  child 
of  five  or  six  years  old,  left  to  his  own  devices,  may  be 
deeply  interested  in  the  Bible,  and  draw  sound  moral 
sustenance  from  it.  And  I  rejoice  that  I  was  left  to  deal 
with  the  Bible  alone;  for  if  I  had  had  some  theologica. 
"  explainer  "  at  my  side,  he  might  have  tried,  as  such 


u.]  THE  SCHOOL  BOARDS.  55 

do,  to  lessen  my  indignation  against  Jacob,  and  thereby 
have  warped  my  moral  sense  for  ever ;  while  the  great 
apocalyptic  spectacle  of  the  ultimate  triumph  of  right 
and  justice  might  have  been  turned  to  the  base  purposes 
of  a  pious  lampooner  of  the  Papacy. 

And  as  to  the  second  objection — costliness — the  reply 
is,  first,  that  the  rate  and  the  Parliamentary  grant  together 
ought  to  be  enough,  considering  that  science  and  art 
teaching  is  already  provided  for ;  and,  secondly,  that  if 
they  are  not,  it  may  be  well  for  the  educational  parlia- 
ment to  consider  what  has  become  of  those  endowments 
which  were  originally  intended  to  be  devoted,  more  or 
less  largely,  to  the  education  of  the  poor. 

When  the  monasteries  were  spoiled,  some  of  their 
endowments  were  applied  to  the  foundation  of  cathedrals  ; 
and  in  all  such  cases  it  was  ordered  that  a  certain  portion 
of  the  endowment  should  be  applied  to  the  purposes  of 
education.  How  much  is  so  applied  ?  Is  that  which  may 
be  so  applied  given  to  help  the  poor,  who  cannot  pay  for 
education,  or  does  it  virtually  subsidize  the  comparatively 
rich,  who  can  ?  How  are  Christ's  Hospital  and  Alleyn's 
foundation  securing  their  right  purposes,  or  how  far  are 
they  perverted  into  contrivances  for  affording  relief  to 
the  classes  who  can  afford  to  pay  for  education  ?  How 
-  But  this  paper  is  already  too  long,  and,  if  I 
begin,  I  may  find  it  hard  to  stop  asking  questions  of 
this  kind,  which  after  all  are  worthy  only  of  the  lowest 
of  Eadicals. 


III. 

ON   MEDICAL   EDUCATION. 


(AN  ADDRESS  TO  THE  STUDENTS  OF  THE  FACULTY  OF  MEDICINE 
IN  UNIVERSITY  COLLEGE,  LONDON,  MAY  18,  1870,  ON  THE 
OCCASION  OF  THE  DISTRIBUTION  OF  PRIZES  FOR  THE  SESSION.) 

IT  lias  given  me  sincere  pleasure  to  be  here  to-day,  at 
the  desire  of  your  highly  respected  President  and  the 
Council  of  the  College.  In  looking  back  upon  my  own 
past,  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  I  have  found  that  it  is  a 
quarter  of  a  century  since  I  took  part  in  those  hopes  and 
in  those  fears  by  which  you  have  all  recently  been 
agitated,  and  which  now  are  at  an  end.  But,  although 
so  long  a  time  has  elapsed  since  I  was  moved  by  the 
same  feelings,  I  beg  leave  to  assure  you  that  my 
sympathy  with  both  victors  and  vanquished  remains 
fresh — so  fresh,  indeed,  that  I  could  almost  try  to  per- 
suade myself  that,  after  all,  it  cannot  be  so  very  long 
ago.  My  business  during  the  last  hour,  however,  has 
been  to  show  that  sympathy  with  one  side  only,  and  I 
assure  you  I  have  done  my  best  to  play  my  part  heartily, 
and  to  rejoice  in  the  success  of  those  who  have  suc- 
ceeded. Still,  I  should  like  to  remind  you  at  the  end  of 
it  all,  that  success  on  an  occasion  of  this  kind,  valuable 
and  important  as  it  is,  is  in  reality  only  putting  the  foot 


in.]  O^V  MEDICAL  EDUCATION.  57 

upon  one  rung  of  the  ladder  which  leads  upwards  ;  and 
that  the  rung  of  a  ladder  was  never  meant  to  rest  upon, 
but  only  to  hold  a  man's  foot  long  enough  to  enable  him 
to  put  the  other  somewhat  higher.  I  trust  that  you  will 
all  regard  these  successes  as  simply  reminders  that  your 
next  business  is,  having  enjoyed  the  success  of  the  day, 
no  longer  to  look  at  that  success,  but  to  look  forward  to 
the  next  difficulty  that  is  to  be  conquered.  And  now, 
having  had  so  much  to  say  to  the  successful  candidates, 
you  must  forgive  me  if  I  add  that  a  sort  of  under- 
current of  sympathy  has  been  going  on  in  my  mind  all 
the  time  for  those  who  have  not  been  successful,  for 
those  valiant  knights  who  have  been  overthrown  in  your 
tourney,  and  have  not  made  their  appearance  in  public.  I 
trust  that,  in  accordance  with  old  custom,  they,  wounded 
and  bleeding,  have  been  carried  off  to  their  tents,  to 
be  carefully  tended  by  the  fairest  of  maidens ;  and  in 
these  days,  when  the  chances  are  that  every  one  of  such 
maidens  will  be  a  qualified  practitioner,  I  have  no  doubt 
that  all  the  splinters  will  have  been  carefully  extracted, 
and  that  they  are  now  physically  healed.  But  there 
may  remain  some  little  fragment  of  moral  or  intellectual 
discouragement,  and  therefore  I  will  take  the  liberty  to 
remark  that  your  chairman  to-day,  if  he  occupied  his 
proper  place,  would  be  among  them.  Your  chairman, 
in  virtue  of  his  position,  and  for  the  brief  hour  that  he 
occupies  that  position,  is  a  person  of  importance  ;  and  it 
may  be  some  consolation  to  those  who  have  failed  if  I 
say,  that  the  quarter  of  a  century  which  I  have  been 
speaking  of,  takes  me  back  to  the  time  when  I  was  up 
at  the  University  of  London,  a  candidate  for  honours* 
in  anatomy  and  physiology,  and  when  I  was  exceed- 
ingly well  beaten  by  my  excellent  friend  Dr.  Eansom, 
of  Nottingham.  There  is  a  person  here  who  recollects 
that  circumstance  very  well.  I  refer  to  your  venerated 


58  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [in. 

teacher  and  mine,  Dr.  Sharpey.  He  was  at  that  time 
one  of  the  examiners  in  anatomy  and  physiology,  and 
you  may  be  quite  sure  that,  as  he  was  one  of  the 
examiners,  there  remained  not  the  smallest  doubt  in  my 
mind  of  the  propriety  of  his  judgment,  and  I  accepted 
my  defeat  with  the  most  comfortabla  assurance  that  I 
had  thoroughly  well  earned  it.  But,  gentlemen,  the 
competitor  having  been  a  worthy  one,  and  the  examina- 
tion a  fair  one,  I  cannot  say  that  I  found  in  that  cir- 
cumstance anything  very  discouraging.  I  said  to  myself, 
"  Never  mind  ;  what's  the  next  thing  to  be  done  ? " 
And  I  found  that  policy  of  "  never  minding  "  and  going 
on  to  the  next  thing  to  be  done,  to  be  the  most  important 
of  all  policies  in  the  conduct  of  practical  life.  It  does 
not  matter  how  many  tumbles  you  have  in  this  life,  so 
long  as  you  do  not  get  dirty  when  you  tumble ;  it  is 
only  the  people  who  have  to  stop  to  be  washed  and  made 
clean,  who  must  necessarily  lose  the  race.  And  I  can 
assure  you  that  there  is  the  greatest  practical  benefit  in 
making  a  few  failures  early  in  life.  You  learn  that 
which  is  of  inestimable  importance — that  there  are  a 
great  many  people  in  the  world  who  are  just  as  clever  as 
you  are.  You  learn  to  put  your  trust,  by  and  by,  in  an 
economy  and  frugality  of  the  exercise  of  your  powers, 
both  moral  and  intellectual ;  and  you  very  soon  find  out, 
if  you  have  not  found  it  out  before,  that  patience  and 
tenacity  of  purpose  are  worth  more  than  twice  their 
weight  of  cleverness.  In  fact,  if  I  were  to  go  on  dis- 
coursing on  this  subject,  I  should  become  almost  eloquent 
in  praise  of  non-success ;  but,  lest  so  doing  should  seem, 
in  any  way,  to  wither  well-earned  laurels,  I  will  turn 
from  that  topic,  and  ask  you  to  accompany  me  in  some 
considerations  touching  another  subject  which  has  a  very 
profound  interest  for  me,  and  which  I  think  ought  to 
have  an  equally  profound  interest  for  you. 


in.]  ON  MEDICAL  EDUCATION.  59 

I  presume  that  the  great  majority  of  those  whom  I 
address  propose  to  devote  themselves  to  the  profession 
of  medicine ;  and  I  do  not  doubt,  from  the  evidences  of 
ability  which  have  been  given  to-day,  that  I  have  before 
me  a  number  of  men  who  will  rise  to  eminence  in  that 
profession,  and  who  will  exert  a  great  and  deserved 
influence  upon  its  future.  That  in  which  I  am  interested, 
and  about  which  I  wish  to  speak,  is  the  subject  of 
medical  education,  and  I  venture  to  speak  about  it  for 
the  purpose,  if  I  can,  of  influencing  you,  who  may  have 
the  power  of  influencing  the  medical  education  of  the 
future.  You  may  ask,  by  what  authority  do  I  venture, 
being  a  person  not  concerned  in  the  practice  of  medicine, 
to  meddle  with  that  subject  ?  I  can  only  tell  you  it  is  a 
fact,  of  which  a  number  of  you  I  dare  say  are  aware  by 
experience  (and  I  trust  the  experience  has  no  painful 
associations),  that  I  have  been  for  a  considerable  number 
of  years  (twelve  or  thirteen  years  to  the  best  of  my 
recollection)  one  of  the  examiners  in  the  University  of 
London.  You  are  further  aware  that  the  men  who  come 
up  to  the  University  of  London  are  the  picked  men  of 
the  medical  schools  of  London,  and  therefore  such  obser- 
vations as  I  may  have  to  make  upon  the  state  of  know- 
ledge of  these  gentlemen,  if  they  be  justified,  in  regard 
to  any  faults  I  may  have  to  find,  cannot  be  held  to  indi- 
cate defects  in  the  capacity,  or  in  the  power  of  applica- 
tion of  those  gentlemen,  but  must  be  laid,  more  or  less, 
to  the  account  of  the  prevalent  system  of  medical  edu- 
cation. I  will  tell  you  what  has  struck  me — but  in 
speaking  in  this  frank  way,  as  one  always  does  about  the 
defects  of  one's  friends,  I  must  beg  you  to  disabuse  your 
minds  of  the  notion  that  I  am  alluding  to  any  particular 
school,  or  to  any  particular  college,  or  to  any  particular 
person  ;  and  to  believe  that  if  I  am  silent  when  I  should 
be  glad  to  speak  with  high  praise,  it  is  because  that 
4 


60       ;^        ^CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [m. 

praise  would  come  too  close  to  this  locality.  What  has 
struck  me,  then,  in  this  long  experience  of  the  men  best 
instructed  in  physiology  from  the  medical  schools  of 
London,  is  (with  the  many  and  brilliant  exceptions  to 
which  I  have  referred),  taking  it  as  a  whole,  and  broadly, 
the  singular  unreality  of  their  knowledge  of  physiology. 
Now,  I  use  that  word  "  unreality "  advisedly :  I  do  not 
say  "  scanty ; "  on  the  contrary,  there  is  plenty  of  it — a 

.  great  deal  too  much  of  it — but  it  is  the  quality,  the 
nature  of  the  knowledge,  which  I  quarrel  with.  I  know 
I  used  to  have — I  don't  know  whether  I  have  now,  but 
I  had  once  upon  a  time — a  bad  reputation  among 
students  for  setting  up  a  very  high  standard  of  acquire- 
ment, and  I  dare  say  you  may  think  that  the  standard 
of  this  old  examiner,  who  happily  is  now  very  nearly  an 
extinct  examiner,  has  been  pitched  too  high.  Nothing 
of  the  kind,  I  assure  you.  The  defects  I  have  noticed, 
and  the  faults  I  have  to  find,  arise  entirely  from  the 
circumstance  that  my  standard  is  pitched  too  low.  This 
is  no  paradox,  gentlemen,  but  quite  simply  the  fact. 

/The  knowledge  I  have  looked  for  was  a  real,  precise, 
thorough,  and  practical  knowledge  of  fundamentals ; 
whereas  that  which  the  best  of  the  candidates,  in  a  large 
proportion  of  cases,  have  had  to  give  me  was  a  large, 

^extensive,  and  inaccurate  knowledge  of  superstructure ; 
and  that  is  what  I  mean  by  saying  that  my  demands 
went  too  low,  and  not  too  high.  What  I  have  had  to 
complain  of  is,  that  a  large  proportion  of  the  gentlemen 
who  come  up  for  physiology  to  the  University  of  London 
do  not  know  it  as  they  know  their  anatomy,  and  have 
not  been  taught  it  as  they  have  been  taught  their 
anatomy.  Now,  I  should  not  wonder  at  all  if  I  heard 
a  great  many  "  No,  noes  "  here ;  but  I  am  not  talking 
about  University  College ;  as  I  have  told  you  before,  1 
am  talking  about  the  average  education  of  medical 


in.]  ON  MEDICAL  EDU 

schools.  What  I  have  found,  and  found  so  much  reason 
to  lament,  is,  that  while  anatomy  has  been  taught  as  a 
science  ought  to  be  taught,  as  a  matter  of  autopsy,  and 
observation,  and  strict  discipline ;  in  a  very  large  number 
of  cases,  physiology  has  been  taught  as  if  it  were  a 
matter  of  books  and  of  hearsay.  I  declare  to  you, 
gentlemen,  that  I  have  often  expected  to  be  told,  when 
I  have  been  asked  a  question  about  the  circulation  of 
the  blood,  that  Professor  Breitkopf  is  of  opinion  that  it 
circulates,  but  that  the  whole  thing  is  an  open  ques- 
tion. I  assure  you  that  I  am  hardly  exaggerating  the 
state  of  mind  on  matters  of  fundamental  importance 
which  I  have  found  over  and  over  again  to  obtain  among 
gentlemen  coming  up  to  that  picked  examination  of  the 
"University  of  London.  Now,  I  do  not  think  that  is  a 
desirable  state  of  things.  I  cannot  understand  why 
physiology  should  not  be  taught — in  fact,  you  have  here 
abundant  evidence  that  it  can  be  taught — with  the  same 
defmiteness  and  the  same  precision  as  anatomy  is  taught. 
And  you  may  depend  upon  this,  that  the  only  physiology 
which  is  to  be  of  any  good  whatever  in  medical  practice, 
or  in  its  application  to  the  study  of  medicine,  is  that 
physiology  which  a  man  knows  of  his  own  knowledge  ; 
just  as  the  only  anatomy  which  would  be  of  any  good  to 
the  surgeon  is  the  anatomy  which  he  knows  of  his  own 
knowledge.  Another  peculiarity  I  have  found  in  the 
physiology  which  has  been  current,  and  that  is,  that  in 
the  minds  of  a  great  many  gentlemen  it  has  been  sup- 
planted by  histology.  They  have  learnt  a  great  deal  of 
histology,  and  they  have  fancied  that  histology  and  phy- 
siology are  the  same  things.  I  have  asked  for  some 
knowledge  of  the  physics  and  the  mechanics  and  the 
chemistry  of  the  human  body,  and  I  have  been  met  by 
talk  about  cells.  I  declare  to  you  I  believe  it  will  take 
me  two  years,  at  least,  of  absolute  rest  from  the  business 


62  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [in. 

of  an  examiner  to  hear  the  word  "cell,"  "germinal 
matter,"  or  "carmine,"  without  a  sort  of  inward 
shudder. 

Well,  now,  gentlemen,  I  am  sure  my  colleagues  in  this 
examination  will  bear  me  out  in  saying  that  I  have  not 
been  exaggerating  the  evils  and  defects  which  are  current 
— have  been  current — in  a  large  quantity  of  the  phy- 
siological  teaching,  the   results  of  which  come  before 
examiners.     And  it  becomes  a  very  interesting  question 
to  know  how  all  this  comes  about,  and  in  what  way  it 
can  be  remedied.     How  it  comes  about  will  be  perfectly 
obvious  to  any  one  who  has  considered  the  growth  of 
medicine.     I  suppose  that  medicine  and  surgery  first 
began  by  some  savage,  more  intelligent  than  the  rest, 
discovering  that  a  certain  herb  was  good  for  a  certain 
pain,  and  that  a  certain  pull,  somehow  or  other,  set  a 
dislocated  joint  right.     I  suppose  all  things  had  their 
humble  beginnings,  and  medicine  and  surgery  were  in 
the  same  condition.     People  who  wear  watches  know 
nothing  about  watchmaking.     A  watch  goes  wrong  and 
it  stops ;  you  see  the  owner  giving  it  a  shake,  or,  if  he 
is  very  bold,  he  opens  the  case,  and  gives  the  balance- 
wheel   a   turn.    Gentlemen,  that  is  empirical  practice, 
and  you  know  what  are  the  results  upon  the  watch.    I 
should  think  you  can  divine  what  are  the  results  of  ana- 
logous operations  upon  the  human  body.     And  because 
men  of  sense  very  soon  found  that  such  were  the  effects 
of  meddling  with  very  complicated  machinery  they  did 
not  understand,  I  suppose  the  first  thing,  as  being  the 
easiest,  was  to  study  the  nature  of  the  works  of  the 
human  watch,  and  the  next  thing  was  to  study  the  way 
the    parts   worked   together,    and   the   way  the   watch 
worked.     Thus,  by  degrees,  we  have  had  growing  up  our 
body  of  anatomists,  or  knowers  of  the  construction  of  the 
human  watch,  and  our  physiologists,  who  know  how  the 


in.]  ON  MEDICAL  EDUCATION.  63 

machine  works.  And  just  as  any  sensible  man,  who  has 
a  valuable  watch,  does  not  meddle  with  it  himself,  but 
goes  to  some  one  who  has  studied  watchmaking,  and 
understands  what  the  effect  of  doing  this  or  that  may 
be  ;  so,  I  suppose,  the  man  who,  having  charge  of  that 
valuable  machine,  his  own  body,  wants  to  have  it  kept 
in  good  order,  comes  to  a  professor  of  the  medical  art 
for  the  purpose  of  having  it  set  right,  believing  that,  by 
deduction  from  the  facts  of  structure  and  from  the  facts 
of  function,  the  physician  will  divine  what  may  be  the 
matter  with  his  bodily  watch  at  that  particular  time,  and 
what  may  be  the  best  means  of  setting  it  right.  If  that 
may  be  taken  as  a  just  representation  of  the  relation  of 
the  theoretical  branches  of  medicine — what  we  may  call 
the  institutes  of  medicine,  to  use  an  old  term — to  the 
practical  branches,  I  think  it  will  be  obvious  to  you  that 
they  are  of  prime  and  fundamental  importance.  What- 
ever tends  to  affect  the  teaching  of  them  injuriously 
must  tend  to  destroy  and  to  disorganize  the  whole  fabric 
of  the  medical  art.  I  think  every  sensible  man  has  seen 
this  long  ago  ;  but  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  attain- 
ing good  teaching  in  the  different  branches  of  the 
theory,  or  institutes,  of  medicine  are  very  serious.  It  is 
a  comparatively  easy  matter — pray  mark  that  I  use  the 
word  "comparatively" — it  is  a  comparatively  easy 
matter  to  learn  anatomy  and  to  teach  it ;  it  is  a  very 
difficult  matter  to  learn  physiology  and  to  teach  it.  It 
is  a  very  difficult  matter  to  know  and  to  teach  those 
branches  of  physics  and  those  branches  of  chemistry 
which  bear  directly  upon  physiology ;  and  hence  it  is 
that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  teaching  of  physiology, 
and  the  teaching  of  the  physics  and  the  chemistry 
which  bear  upon  it,  must  necessarily  be  in  a  state 
of  relative  imperfection;  and  there  is  nothing  to  be 
grumbled  at  in  the  fact  that  this  relative  imperfection 


64  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [m. 

exists.  But  is  the  relative  imperfection  which  exists 
only  such  as  is  necessary,  or  is  it  made  worse  by  our 
practical  arrangements  ?  I  believe — and  if  I  did  not  so 
believe  I  should  not  have  troubled  you  with  these  obser- 
vations— I  believe  it  is  made  infinitely  worse  by  our 
practical  arrangements,  or  rather,  I  ought  to  say,  our  very 
unpractical  arrangements.  Some  very  wise  man  long  ago 
affirmed  that  every  question,  in  the  long  run,  was  a  ques- 
tion of  finance ;  and  there  is  a  good  deal  to  be  said  for 
that  view.  Most  assuredly  the  question  of  medical 
teaching  is,  in  a  very  large  and  broad  sense,  a  question 
of  finance.  What  I  mean  is  this :  that  in  London  the 
arrangements  of  the  medical  schools,  and  the  number  of 
them,  are  such  as  to  render  it  almost  impossible  that 
men  who  confine  themselves  to  the  teaching  of  the 
theoretical  branches  of  the  profession  should  be  able 
to  make  their  bread  by  that  operation  ;  and,  you  know,  if 
a  man  cannot  make  his  bread,  he  cannot  teach — at  least 
his  teaching  comes  to  a  speedy  end.  That  is  a  matter 
of  physiology.  Anatomy  is  fairly  well  taught,  because  it 
lies  in  the  direction  of  practice,  and  a  man  is  all  the 
better  surgeon  for  being  a  good  anatomist.  It  does  not 
absolutely  interfere  with  the  pursuits  of  a  practical 
surgeon  if  he  should  hold  a  Chair  of  Anatomy — though 
I  do  not  for  one  moment  say  that  he  would  not  be  a 
better  teacher  if  he  did  not  devote  himself  to  practice. 
(Applause.)  Yes,  I  know  exactly  what  that  cheer  means, 
but  I  am  keeping  as  carefully  as  possible  from  any  sort 
of  allusion  to  Professor  Ellis.  But  the  fact  is,  that  even 
human  anatomy  has  now  grown  to  be  so  large  a  matter, 
that  it  takes  the  whole  devotion  of  a  man's  life  to  put 
the  great  mass  of  knowledge  upon  that  subject  into  such 
a  shape  that  it  can  be  teachable  to  the  mind  of  the 
ordinary  student.  What  the  student  wants  in  a  pro- 
fessor is  a  man  who  shall  stand  between  him  and  the 


in.]  ON  MEDICAL  EDUCATION.  65 

infinite  diversity  and  variety  of  human  knowledge,  and 
who  shall  gather  all  that  together,  and  extract  from  it 
that  which  is  capable  of  being  assimilated  by  the  mind. 
That  function  is  a  vast  and  an  important  one,  and  unless, 
in  such  subjects  as  anatomy,  a  man  is  wholly  free  from 
other  cares,  it  is  almost  impossible  that  he  can  perform 
it  thoroughly  and  well.  But  if  it  be  hardly  possible  for 
a  man  to  pursue  anatomy  without  actually  breaking 
with  his  profession,  how  is  it  possible  for  him  to  pursue 
physiology  ? 

I  get  every  year  those  very  elaborate  reports  of  Henle 
and  Meissner — volumes  of,  I  suppose,  400'  pages  alto- 
gether— and  they  consist  merely  of  abstracts  of  the  me- 
moirs and  works  which  have  been  written  on  Anatomy 
and  Physiology  —  only  abstracts  of  them!  How  is  a 
man  to  keep  up  his  acquaintance  with  all  that  is  doing 
in  the  physiological  world — in  a  world  advancing  with 
enormous  strides  every  day  and  every  hour — if  he  has 
to  be  distracted  with  the  cares  of  practice  ?  You  know 
very  well  it  must  be  impracticable  to  do  so.  Our  men 
of  ability  join  ourjnedical  schools  with  an  eye  to  the 
future.  They  take  the  Chairs  of  Anatomy  or  of  Phy- 
siology ;  and  by  and  by  they  leave  those  Chairs  for  the 
more  profitable  pursuits  into  which  they  have  drifted  by 
professional  success,  and  so  they  become  clothed,  and 
physiology  is  bare.  The  result  is,  that  in  those  schools 
in  which  physiology  is  thus  left  to  the  benevolence,  so 
to  speak,  of  those  who  have  no  time  to  look  to  it,  the 
effect  of  such  teaching  comes  out  obviously,  and  is  made 
manifest  in  what  I  spoke  of  just  now — the  unreality,  the 
bookishness  of  the  knowledge  of  the  taught.  And  if 
this  is  the  case  in  physiology,  still  more  must  it  be  the 
case  in  those  branches  of  physics  which  are  the  founda- 
tion of  physiology ;  although  it  may  be  less  the  case 
in  chemistry,  because  for  an  able  chemist  a  certain 


66  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [in. 

honourable  and  independent  career  lies  in  the  direc- 
tion of  his  work,  and  he  is  able,  like  the  anatomist, 
to  look  upon  what  he  may  teach  to  the  student  as 
not  absolutely  taking  him  away  from  his  bread-winning 
pursuits. 

But  it  is  of  no  use  to  grumble  about  this  state  of  things 
unless  one  is  prepared  to  indicate  some  sort  of  practical 
remedy.  And  I  believe — and  I  venture  to  make  the 
statement  because  I  am  wholly  independent  of  all  sorts 
of  medical  schools,  and  may,  therefore,  say  what  I  believe 
without  being  supposed  to  be  affected  by  any  personal 
interest — but  I  say  I  believe  that  the  remedy  for  this 
state  of  things,  for  that  imperfection  of  our  theoretical 
knowledge  which  keeps  down  the  ability  of  England  at 
the  present  time  in  medical  matters,  is  a  mere  affair  of 
mechanical  arrangement;  that  so  long  as  you  have  a 
dozen  medical  schools  scattered  about  in  different  parts 
of  the  metropolis,  and  dividing  the  students  among  them, 
so  long,  in  all  the  smaller  schools  at  any  rate,  it  is  im- 
possible that  any  other  state  of  things  than  that  which 
I  have  been  depicting  should  obtain.  Professors  must 
live  ;  to  live  they  must  occupy  themselves  with  practice, 
and  if  they  occupy  themselves  with  practice,  the  pursuit 
of  the  abstract  branches  of*  science  must  go  to  the  wall. 
All  this  is  a  plain  and  obvious  matter  of  common-sense 
reasoning.  I  believe  you  will  never  alter  this  state  of 
things  until,  either  by  consent  or  by  force  majeure — and 
I  should  be  very  sorry  to  see  the  latter  applied — but 
until  there  is  some  new  arrangement,  and  until  all  the 
theoretical  branches  of  the  profession,  the  institutes  of 
medicine,  are  taught  in  London  in  not  more  than  one  or 
two,  or  at  the  outside  three,  central  institutions,  no  good 
will  be  effected.  If  that  large  body  of  men,  the  medical 
students  of  London,  were  obliged  in  the  first  place  to 
get  a  knowledge  of  the  theoretical  branches  of  their 


t  ,s-  s          v 

V 

in.]  ON  MEDICAL  EDUCATION.  67 

profession  in  two  or  three  central  schools,  there  would 
be  abundant  means  for  maintaining  able  professors — not, 
indeed,  for  enriching  them,  as  they  would  be  able  to 
enrich  themselves  by  practice — but  for  enabling  them 
to  make  that  choice  which  such  men  are  so  willing  to 
make  ;  namely,  the  choice  between  wealth  and  a  modest 
competency,  when  that  modest  competency  is  to  be 
combined  with  a  sd^ntific  career,  and  the  means  of  ad- 
vancing knowledge.  I  do  not  believe  that  all  the  talking 
about,  and  tinkering  of,  medical  education  will  do  the 
slightest  good  until  the  fact  is  clearly  recognized,  that  men 
must  be  thoroughly  grounded  in  the  theoretical  branches 
of  their  profession,  and  that  to  this  end  the  teaching  of 
those  theoretical  branches  must  be  confined  to  two  or 
three  centres. 

Now  let  me  add  one  other  word,  and  that  is,  that  if 
I  were  a  despot,  I  would  cut  down  these  branches  to  a 
very  considerable  extent.  The  next  thing  to  be  done- 
beyond  that  which  I  mentioned  just  now,  is  to  go  back 
to  primary  education.  The  great  step  towards  a  thorough 
medical  education  is  to  insist  upon  the  teaching  of  the 
elements  of  the  physical  sciences  in  all  schools,  so  that 
medical  students  shall  not  go  up  to  the  medical  colleges 
utterly  ignorant  of  that  with  which  they  have  to  deal ; 
to  insist  on  the  elements  of  chemistry,  the  elements  of 
botany,  and  the  elements  of  physics  being  taught  in  our 
ordinary  and  common  schools,  so  that  there  shall  be  some 
preparation  for  the  discipline  of  medical  colleges.  And, 
if  this  reform  were  once  effected,  you  might  confine  the 
"  Institutes  of  Medicine  "  to  physics  as  applied  to  phy- 
siology—  to  chemistry  as  applied  to  physiology  —  to 
physiology  itself,  and  to  anatomy.  Afterwards,  the 
student,  thoroughly  grounded  in  these  matters,  might  go 
to  any  hospital  he  pleased  for  the  purpose  of  studying 
the  practical  branches  of  his  profession.  The  practical 


68  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSED  [in. 

teaching  niiglit  be  made  as  local  as  you  like ;  and  you 
might  use  to  advantage  the  opportunities  afforded  by  all 
these  local  institutions  for  acquiring  a  knowledge  of  the 
practice  of  the  profession.  But  you  may  say  :  "  This  is 
abolishing  a  great  deal ;  you  are  getting  rid  of  botany 
and  zoology  to  begin  with."  I  have  not  a  doubt  that 
they  ought  to  be  got  rid  of,  as  branches  of  special 
medical  education ;  they  ought  to  be  put  back  to  an 
earlier  stage,  and  made  branches  of  general  education. 
Let  me  say,  by  way  of  self-denying  ordinance,  for  which 
you  will,  I  am  sure,  give  me  credit,  that  I  believe  that 
comparative  anatomy  ought  to  be  absolutely  abolished. 
I  say  so,  not  without  a  certain  fear  of  the  Vice-Chan- 
cellor of  the  University  of  London  who  sits  upon  my 
left.  But  I  do  not  think  the  charter  gives  him  very  much 
power  over  me  ;  moreover,  I  shall  soon  come  to  an  end  of 
my  examinership,  and  therefore  I  am  not  afraid,  but  shall 
go  on  to  say  what  I  was  going  to  say,  and  that  is,  that 
in  my  belief  it  is  a  downright  cruelty — I  have  no  other 
word  for  it — to  require  from  gentlemen  who  are  engaged 
in  medical  studies,  the  pretence — for  it  is  nothing  else, 
and  can  be  nothing  else,  than  a  pretence — of  a  knowledge 
of  comparative  anatomy  as  part  of  their  medical  curri- 
culum. Make  it  part  of  their  Arts  teaching  if  you  like, 
make  it  part  of  their  general  education  if  you  like,  make 
it  part  of  their  qualification  for  the  scientific  degree  by 
all  means — that  is  its  proper  place  ;  but  to  require  that 
gentlemen  whose  whole  faculties  should  be  bent  upon 
the  acquirement  of  a  real  knowledge  of  human  phy- 
siology should  worry  themselves  with  getting  up  hearsay 
about  the  alternation  of  generations  in  the  SalpSB  is 
really  monstrous.  I  cannot  characterize  it  in  any  other 
way.  And  having  sacrificed  my  own  pursuit,  I  am  sure 
I  may  sacrifice  other  people's ;  and  I  make  this  remark 
with  all  the  more  willingness  because  I  discovered,  on 


TIL]  ON  MEDICAL  EDUCATION.  GO 

reading  the  name  of  your  Professors  just  now,  that  the 
Professor  of  Materia  Medica  is  not  present.  I  must  con- 
fess, if  I  had  my  way  I  should  abolish  Materia  Medica 1 
altogether.  I  recollect,  when  I  was  first  tinder  exami- 
nation at  the  University  of  London,  Dr.  Pereira  was 
the  examiner,  and  you  know  that  "Pereira's  Materia 
Medica"  was  a  book  de  omnibus  rebus.  I  recollect 
my  struggles  with  that  book  late  at  night  and  early  in 
the  morning  (I  worked  very  hard  in  those  days),  and  I 
do  believe  that  I  got  that  book  into  my  head  somehow 
or  other,  but  then  I  will  undertake  to  say  that  I  forgot  it 
all  a  week  afterwards.  Not  one  trace  of  a  knowledge  of 
drugs  has  remained  in  my  memory  from  that  time  to 
this ;  arid  really,  as  a  matter  of  common  sense,  I  cannot 
understand  the  arguments  for  obliging  a  medical  man  to 
know  all  about  drugs  and  where  they  come  from.  Why 
not  make  him  belong  to  the  Iron  and  Steel  Institute,  and 
learn  something  about  cutlery,  because  he  uses  knives  ? 

But  do  not  suppose  that,  after  all  these  deductions, 
there  would  not  be  ample  room  for  your  activity.  Let 
us  count  up  what  we  have  left.  I  suppose  all  the  time 
for  medical  education  that  can  be  hoped  for  is,  at  the 
outside,  about  four  years.  Well,  what  have  you  to  master 
in  those  four  years  upon  my  supposition  ?  Physics  ap- 
plied to  physiology;  chemistry  applied  to  physiology; 
physiology ;  anatomy ;  surgery ;  medicine  (including 
therapeutics) ;  obstetrics ;  hygiene ;  and  medical  juris- 
prudence— nine  subjects  for  four  years  !  And  when 
you  consider  what  those  subjects  are,  and  that  the  acqui- 
sition of  anything  beyond  the  rudiments  of  any  one 
of  them  may  tax  the  energies  of  a  lifetime,  I  think 
that  even  those  energies  which  you  young  gentlemen 
have  been  displaying  for  the  last  hour  or  two  might 

i  It  will,  I  hope,  be  understood  that  I  do  not  include  Therapeutics  under 
this  head. 


70  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [in. 

be  taxed  to  keep  yon  thoroughly  up  to  what  is  wanted 
for  your  medical  career. 

I  entertain  a  very  strong  conviction  that  any  one 
who  adds  to  medical  education  one  iota  or  tittle  beyond 
what  is  absolutely  necessary,  is  guilty  of  a  very  grave 
offence.  Gentlemen,  it  will  depend  upon  the  knowledge 
that  you  happen  to  possess, — upon  your  means  of 
applying  it  within  your  own  field  of  action, — whether 
the  bills  of  mortality  of  your  district  are  increased  or 
diminished ;  and  that,  gentlemen,  is  a  very  serious  con- 
sideration indeed.  And,  under  those  circumstances,  the 
subjects  with  which  you  have  to  deal  being  so  difficult, 
their  extent  so  enormous,  and  the  time  at  your  disposal 
so  limited,  I  could  not  feel  my  conscience  easy  if  I  did 
not,  on  such  an  occasion  as  this,  raise  a  protest  against 
employing  your  energies  upon  the  acquisition  of  any 
knowledge  which  may  not  be  absolutely  needed  in  your 
future  career. 


IV. 

YEAST. 


IT  has  been  known,  from  time  immemorial,  that  the 
sweet  liquids  which  may  be  obtained  by  expressing  the 
juices  of  the  fruits  and  stems  of  various  plants,  or  by 
steeping  malted  barley  in  hot  water,  or  by  mixing  honey 
with  water — are  liable  to  undergo  a  series  of  very  singu- 
lar changes,  if  freely  exposed  to  the  air  and  left  to  them- 
selves, in  warm  weather.  However  clear  and  pellucid 
the  liquid  may  have  been  when  first  prepared,  however 
carefully  it  may  have  been  freed,  by  straining  and  filtra- 
tion, from  even  the  finest  visible  impurities,  it  will  not 
remain  clear.  After  a  time  it  will  become  cloudy  and 
turbid ;  little  bubbles  will  be  seen  rising  to  the  surface, 
and  their  abundance  will  increase  until  the  liquid  hisses 
as  if  it  were  simmering  on  the  fire.  By  degrees,  some  of 
the  solid  particles  which  produce  the  turbidity  of  the 
liquid  collect  at  its  surface  into  a  scum,  which  is  blown 
up  by  the  emerging  air-bubbles  into  a  thick,  foamy  froth. 
Another  moiety  sinks  to  the  bottom,  and  accumulates  as 
a  muddy  sediment,  or  "lees." 

"When  this  action  has  continued,  with  more  or  less 
violence,  for  a  certain  time,  it  gradually  moderates.  The 
evolution  of  bubbles  slackens,  and  finally  comes  to  an 


72  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [iv. 

end  ;  scum  and  lees  alike  settle  at  the  bottom,  and  the 
fluid  is  once  more  clear  and  transparent.  But  it  has 
acquired  properties  of  which  no  trace  existed  in  the 
original  liquid.  Instead  of  being  a  mere  sweet  fluid, 
mainly  composed  of  sugar  and  water,  the  sugar  has  more 
or  less  completely  disappeared,  and  it  has  acquired  that 
peculiar  smell  and  taste  which  we  call  "  spirituous." 
Instead  of  being  devoid  of  any  obvious  effect  upon  the 
animal  economy,  it  has  become  possessed  of  a  very 
wonderful  influence  on  the  nervous  system ;  so  that  in 
small  doses  it  exhilarates,  while  in  larger  it  stupefies,  and 
may  even  destroy  life. 

Moreover,  if  the  original  fluid  is  put  into  a  still,  and 
heated  for  a  while,  the  first  and  last  product  of  its  dis- 
tillation is  simple  water ;  while,  when  the  altered  fluid  is 
subjected  to  the  same  process,  the  matter  which  is  first 
condensed  in  the  receiver  is  found  to  be  a  clear,  volatile 
substance,  which  is  lighter  than  water,  has  a  pungent 
taste  and  smell,  possesses  the  intoxicating  powers  of  the 
fluid  in  an  eminent  degree,  and  takes  fire  the  moment  it 
is  brought  in  contact  with  a  flame.  The  alchemists 
called  this  volatile  liquid,  which  they  obtained  from  wine, 
"  spirits  of  wine,"  just  as  they  called  hydrochloric  acid 
"  spirits  of  salt,"  and  as  we,  to  this  day,  call  refined 
turpentine  "  spirits  of  turpentine."  As  the  "  spiritus," 
or  breath,  of  a  man  was  thought  to  be  the  most  refined 
and  subtle  part  of  him,  the  intelligent  essence  of  man 
was  also  conceived  as  a  sort  of  breath,  or  spirit ;  and, 
by  analogy,  the  most  refined  essence  of  anything  was 
called  its  "spirit."  And  thus  it  has  come  about  that  we 
use  the  same  word  for  the  soul  of  man  and  for  a  glass 
of  gin. 

At  the  present  day,  however,  we  even  more  commonly 
use  another  name  for  this  peculiar  liquid — namely, 
"  alcohol,"  and  its  origin  is  not  less  singular.  The  Dutch 


iv.]  YEAST.  73 

physician,  Van  Helmont,  lived  in  the  latter  part  of  the 
sixteenth  and  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century 
—in  the  transition  period  between  alchemy  and  chemistry 
— and  was  rather  more  alchemist  than  chemist.  Appended 
to  his  "  Opera  Omnia,"  published  in  1707,  there  is  a  very 
needful  "Clavis  ad  obscuriorum  sensum  referandum,"  in 
which  the  following  passage  occurs  : — 

"  ALCOHOL. — Chymicis  est  liquor  aut  pulvis  summc  subtilisatus, 
vocabulo  Orientalibus  quoque,  cum  primis  Habessinis,  familiari,  quibus 
cohol  speciatira  pulverem  impalpabilem  ex  antimouio  pro  oculis  tin- 
gendis  denotat.  .  .  Hodie  autem,  ob  analogiam,  quivis  pulvis  teiierior, 
ut  pulvis  oculoruDi  cancri  summe  subtilisatus  alcohol  audit,  baud 
aliter  ac  spiritus  rectificatissimi  alcolisati  dicuntur." 

Similarly,  Kobert  Boyle  speaks  of  a  fine  powder  as 
"  alcohol ; "  and,  so  late  as  the  middle  of  the  last  cen- 
tury, the  English  lexicographer,  Nathan  Bailey,  defines 
"  alcohol "  as  "  the  pure  substance  of  anything  separated 
from  the  more  gross,  a  very  fine  and  impalpable  powder, 
or  a  very  pure,  well-rectified  spirit."  But,  by  the  time 
of  the  publication  of  Lavoisier's  "  Traitd  Ele'mentaire  de 
Chimie,"  in  1789,  the  term  "alcohol,"  "  alkohol,"  or 
"  alkool "  (for  it  is  spelt  in  all  three  ways),  which  Van 
Helmont  had  applied  primarily  to  a  fine  powder,  and  only 
secondarily  to  spirits  of  wine,  had  lost  its  primary  mean- 
ing altogether ;  and,  from  the  end  of  the  last  century 
until  now,  it  has,  I  believe,  been  used  exclusively  as  the 
denotation  of  spirits  of  wine,  and  bodies  chemically 
allied  to  that  substance. 

The  process  which  gives  rise  to  alcohol  in  a  saccharine 
fluid  is  known  to  us  as  "  fermentation ; "  a  term  based 
upon  the  apparent  boiling  up  or  "  effervescence  "  of  the 
fermenting  liquid,  and  of  Latin  origin. 

Our  Teutonic  cousins  call  the  same  process  "gcihren/' 
"giisen,"  "goschen,"  and  "gischen;"  but,  oddly  enough, 
we  do  not  seem  to  have  retained  their  verb  or  theii 


74  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [IT. 

substantive  denoting  the  action  itself,  though  we  do  use 
names  identical  with,  or  plainly  derived  from,  theirs  for 
the  scum  and  lees.  These  are  called,  in  Low  German, 
"gascht"  and  "gischt;"  in  Anglo-Saxon,  "gest,"  "gist," 
and  "  yst,"  whence  our  "  yeast/'  Again,  in  Low  German 
and  in  Anglo-Saxon,  there  is  another  name  for  yeast, 
having  the  form  "barm,"  or  "beorm;"  and,  in  the 
Midland  Counties,  "barm"  is  the  name  by  which  yeast 
is  still  best  known.  In  High  German,  there  is  a  third 
name  for  yeast,  "hefe,"  which  is  not  represented  in 
English,  so  far  as  I  know. 

All  these  words  are  said  by  philologers  to  be  derived 
from  roots  expressive  of  the  intestine  motion  of  a 
fermenting  substance.  Thus  "  hefe "  is  derived  from 
"heben,"  to  raise;  "barm"  from  "beren"  or  "baren," 
to  bear  up ;  "  yeast,"  "  yst,"  and  "  gist,"  have  all  to  do 
with  seething  and  foam,  with  "  yea  sty  waves,"  and 
"  gusty  "  breezes. 

The  same  reference  to  the  swelling  up  of  the  ferment- 
ing substance  is  seen  in  the  Gallo-Latin  terms  "levure" 
and  "leaven." 

It  is  highly  creditable  to  the  ingenuity  of  our  ancestors 
that  the  peculiar  property  of  fermented  liquids,  in  virtue 
of  which  they  "  make  glad  the  heart  of  man/'  seems  to 
have  been  known  in  the  remotest  periods  of  which  we 
have  any  record.  All  savages  take  to  alcoholic  fluids 
as  if  they  were  to  the  manner  born.  Our  Vedic  fore- 
fathers intoxicated  themselves  with  the  juice  of  the 
"  soma ; "  Noah,  by  a  not  unnatural  reaction  against  a 
superfluity  of  water,  appears  to  have  taken  the  earliest 
practicable  opportunity  of  qualifying  that  which  he  was 
obliged  to  drink  ;  and  the  ghosts  of  the  ancient  Egyptians 
were  solaced  by  pictures  of  banquets  in  which  the  wine- 
cup  passes  round,  graven  on  the  walls  of  their  tombs. 
A  knowledge  of  the  process  of  fermentation,  therefore, 


iv.]  YEAST.  75 

was  in  all  probability  possessed  by  the  prehistoric 
populations  of  the  globe ;  and  it  must  have  become  a 
matter  of  great  interest  even  to  primaeval  wine-bibbers 
to  study  the  methods  by  which  fermented  liquids  could 
be  surely  manufactured.  No  doubt,  therefore,  it  was 
soon  discovered  that  the  most  certain,  as  well  as  the 
most  expeditious,  way  of  making  a  sweet  juice  ferment 
was  to  add  to  it  a  little  of  the  scum,  or  lees,  of  another 
fermenting  juice.  And  it  can  hardly  be  questioned  that 
this  singular  excitation  of  fermentation  in  one  fluid,  by 
a  sort  of  infection,  or  inoculation,  of  a  little  ferment 
taken  from  some  other  fluid,  together  with  the  strange 
swelling,  foaming,  and  hissing  of  the  fermented  sub- 
stance, must  have  always  attracted  attention  from  the 
more  thoughtful.  Nevertheless,  the  commencement  of 
the  scientific  analysis  of  the  phenomena  dates  from  a 
period  not  earlier  than  the  first  half  of  the  seventeenth 
century. 

At  this  time,  Van  Helmont  made  a  first  step,  by 
pointing  out  that  the  peculiar  hissing  and  bubbling  of  a 
fermented  liquid  is  due,  not  to  the  evolution  of  common 
air  (which  he,  as  the  inventor  of  the  term  "gas,"  calls 
"gas  ventosum"),  but  to  that  of  a  peculiar  kind  of  air 
such  as  is  occasionally  met  with  in  caves,  mines,  and 
wells,  and  which  he  calls  "  gas  sylvestre." 

But  a  century  elapsed  before  the  nature  of  this  "  gas 
sylvestre,"  or,  as  it  was  afterwards  called,  "  fixed  air," 
was  clearly  determined,  and  it  was  found  to  be  identical 
with  that  deadly  "  choke-damp "  by  which  the  lives  of 
those  who  descend  into  old  wells,  or  mines,  or  brewers' 
vats,  are  sometimes  suddenly  ended;  and  with  the 
poisonous  aeriform  fluid  which  is  produced  by  the  com- 
bustion of  charcoal,  and  now  goes  by  the  name  of 
carbonic  acid  gas. 

During  the  same  time  it  gradually  became  clear  that 


76  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [ir, 

the  presence  of  sugar  was  essential  to  the  production  of 
alcohol  and  the  evolution  of  carbonic  acid  gas,  which  are 
the  two  great  and  conspicuous  products  of  fermentation. 
And  finally,  in  1787,  the  Italian  chemist,  Fabroni,  made 
the  capital  discovery  that  the  yeast  ferment,  the  presence 
of  which  is  necessary  to  fermentation,  is  what  he  termed 
a  "  vegeto-animal "  substance — or  is  a  body  which  gives 
off  ammoniacal  salts  when  it  is  burned,  and  is,  in  other 
ways,  similar  to  the  gluten  of  plants  and  the  albumen 
and  casein  of  animals. 

These  discoveries  prepared  the  way  for  the  illustrious 
Frenchman,  Lavoisier,  who  first  approached  the  problem 
of  fermentation  with  a  complete  conception  of  the  nature 
of  the  work  to  be  done.  The  words  in  which  he  ex- 
presses this  conception,  in  the  treatise  on  elementary 
chemistry  to  which  reference  has  already  been  made, 
mark  the  year  1789  as  the  commencement  of  a  revolu- 
tion of  not  less  moment  in  the  world  of  science  than 
that  which  simultaneously  burst  over  the  political  world, 
and  soon  engulfed  Lavoisier  himself  in  one  of  its  mad 
eddies. 

"  We  may  lay  it  down  as  an  incontestable  axiom  that,  in  all  the 
operations  of  art  and  nature,  nothing  is  created ;  an  equal  quantity  of 
matter  exists  both  before  and  after  the  experiment :  the  quality  and 
quantity  of  the  elements  remain  precisely  the  same,  and  nothing  takes 
place  beyond  changes  and  modifications  in  the  combinations  of  these 
elements.  Upon  this  principle,  the  whole  art  of  performing  chemical 
experiments  depends ;  we  must  always  suppose  an  exact  equality 
between  the  elements  of  the  body  examined  and  those  of  the  products 
of  its  analysis. 

"  Hence,  since  from  must  of  grapes  we  procure  alcohol  and  carbonic 
acid,  I  have  an  undoubted  right  to  suppose  that  must  consists  of  car- 
bonic acid  and  alcohol.  From  these  premisses  we  have  two  modes  of 
ascertaining  what  passes  during  vinous  fermentation  :  either  by  deter- 
mining the  nature  of,  and  the  elements  which  compose,  the  ferment- 
able substances ;  or  by  accurately  examining  the  products  resulting 
from  fermentation  ;  and  it  is  evident  that  the  knowledge  of  either  of 
these  must  lead  to  accurate  conclusions  concerning  the  nature  and  com- 


iv.]  YEAST.  77 

position  of  the  other.  From  these  considerations  it  became  necessary 
accurately  to  determine  the  constituent  elements  of  the  fermentable 
substances  ;  and  for  this  purpose  I  did  not  make  use  of  the  compound 
juices  of  fruits,  the  rigorous  analysis  of  which  is  perhaps  impossible, 
but  made  choice  of  sugsvr,  which  is  easily  analysed,  and  the  nature  of 
which  I  have  already  explained.  This  substance  is  a  true  vegetable 
oxyd,  with  two  bases,  composed  of  hydrogen  and  carbon,  brought  to 
the  state  of  an  oxyd  by  means  of  a  certain  proportion  of  oxygen  ;  and 
these  three  elements  are  combined  in  such  a  way  that  a  very  slight 
force  is  sufficient  to  destroy  the  equilibrium  of  their  connection/' 

After  giving  the  details  of  his  analysis  of  sugar  and 
of  the  products  of  fermentation,  Lavoisier  continues  : — 

"  The  effect  of  the  vinous  fermentation  upon  sugar  is  thus  reduced 
to  the  mere  separation  of  its  elements  into  two  portions ;  one  part  is 
oxygenated  at  the  expense  of  the  other,  so  as  to  form  carbonic  acid  ; 
while  the  other  part,  being  disoxygenated  in  favour  of  the  latter,  is 
converted  into  the  combustible  substance  called  alkohol  ;  therefore,  if 
it  were  possible  to  re-unite  alkohol  and  carbonic  acid  together,  we 
ought  to  form  sugar."1 

Thus  Lavoisier  thought  he  had  demonstrated  that  the 
carbonic  acid  and  the  alcohol  which  are  produced  by 
the  process  of  fermentation,  are  equal  in  weight  to  the 
sugar  which  disappears ;  but  the  application  of  the  more 
refined  methods  of  modern  chemistry  to  the  investigation 
of  the  products  of  fermentation  by  Pasteur,  in  1860, 
proved  that  this  is  not  exactly  true,  and  that  there  is 
a  deficit  of  from  5  to  7  per  cent,  of  the  sugar  which  is 
not  covered  by  the  alcohol  and  carbonic  acid  evolved. 
The  greater  part  of  this  deficit  is  accounted  for  by  the 
discovery  of  two  substances,  glycerine  and  succinic  acid, 
of  the  existence  of  which  Lavoisier  was  unaware,  in  the 
fermented  liquid.  But  about  1J  per  cent,  still  remains 
to  be  made  good.  According  to  Pasteur,  it  has  been 
appropriated  by  the  yeast,  but  the  fact  that  such  appro- 
priation takes  place  cannot  be  said  to  be  actually  proved. 

i  "  Elements  of  Chemistry."  By  M.  Lavoisier.  Translated  by  Robert 
Kcrr.  Second  Edition,  1793  (pp.  18G— 196). 


78  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDEESSES.  [iv. 

However  this  may  be,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
constituent  elements  of  fully  98  per  cent,  of  the  sugar 
which  has  vanished  during  fermentation  have  simply 
undergone  rearrangement ;  like  the  soldiers  of  a  brigade, 
who  at  the  word  of  command  divide  themselves  into 
the  independent  regiments  to  which  they  belong.  The 
brigade  is  sugar,  the  regiments  are  carbonic  acid,  succinic 
acid,  alcohol,  and  glycerine. 

From  the  time  of  Fabroni,  onwards,  it  has  been  ad- 
mitted that  the  agent  by  which  this  surprising  rearrange- 
ment of  the  particles  of  the  sugar  is  effected  is  the  yeast. 
But  the  first  thoroughly  conclusive  evidence  of  the 
necessity  of  yeast  for  the  fermentation  of  sugar  was 
furnished  by  Appert,  whose  method  of  preserving  perish- 
able articles  of  food  excited  so  much  attention  in  France 
at  the  beginning  of  this  century.  Gay-Lussac,  in  his 
"Memoire  sur  la  Fermentation,"1  alludes  to  Appert' s 
method  of  preserving  beer-wort  unfermented  for  an 
indefinite  time,  by  simply  boiling  the  wort  and  closing 
the  vessel  in  which  the  boiling  fluid  is  contained,  in  such 
a  way  as  thoroughly  to  exclude  air ;  and  he  shows  that, 
if  a  little  yeast  be  introduced  into  such  wort,  after  it 
has  cooled,  the  wort  at  once  begins  to  ferment,  even 
though  every  precaution  be  taken  to  exclude  air.  And 
this  statement  has  since  received  full  confirmation  from 
Pasteur. 

On  the  other  hand,  Schwann,  Schroeder  and  Dusch, 
and  Pasteur,  have  amply  proved  that  air  may  be  allowed 
to  have  free  access  to  beer-wort,  without  exciting 
fermentation,  if  only  efficient  precautions  are  taken 
to  prevent  the  entry  of  particles  of  yeast  along  with 
the  air. 

Thus,  the  truth  that  the  fermentation  of  a  simple 
solution  of  sugar  in  water  depends  upon  the  presence  of 
i  "  Annales  de  Cliimie,"  1810. 


iv.]  YEAST.  79 

yeast,  rests  upon  an  unassailable  foandation ;  and  the 
inquiry  into  the  exact  nature  of  the  substance  which 
possesses  such  a  wonderful  chemical  influence  becomes 
profoundly  interesting. 

The  first  step  towards  the  solution  of  this  problem 
was  made  two  centuries  ago  by  the  patient  and  pains- 
taking Dutch  naturalist,  Leeuwenhoek,  who  in  the  year 
1680  wrote  thus: — 

"  Saepissime  cxaminavi  fermentum  cerevisiae,  semperque  hoc  ex 
globulis  per  materiam  pellucidam  fluitantibus,  quam  cerevisiam  esse 
censui,  constare  observavi :  vidi  etiam  evidentissime,  unumquemque 
hujus  fermenti  globulum  denuo  ex  sex  distinctia  globullis  constare, 
accurate  eidem  quantitate  et  formse,  cui  globulis  sanguinis  nostri, 
respondentibus. 

"  Verum  talis  rnihi  de  horum  origine  et  formatione  conceptua  for- 
mabam  ;  globulia  nempe  ex  quibus  farina  Tritici,  Hordei,  Avense, 
Fagotritici,  se  constat  aquae  calore  dissolvi  et  aquae  commisceri ;  hac, 
vero  aqua,  quam  cerevisiam  vocare  licet,  refrigescente,  multoa  ex 
minimis  particulis  in  cerevisia  coadunari,  et  hoc  pacto  efficere  particu- 
lam  sive  globulum,  quae  sexta  para  est  globuli  faecis,  et  iterum  sex  ex 
hisce  globulis  eonjungi."1 

Thus  Leeuwenhoek  discovered  that  yeast  consists  of 
globules  floating  in  a  fluid;  but  he  thought  that  they 
were  merely  the  starchy  particles  of  the  grain  from  which 
the  wort  was  made,  re-arranged.  He  discovered  the  fact 
that  yeast  had  a  definite  structure,  but  not  the  meaning 
of  the  fact.  A  century  and  a  half  elapsed,  and  the  in- 
vestigation of  yeast  was  recommenced  almost  simulta- 
neously by  Cagniard  de  la  Tour  in  France,  and  by 
Schwann  and  Ktitzing  in  Germany.  The  French  observer 
was  the  first  to  publish  his  results ;  and  the  subject 
received  at  his  hands  and  at  those  of  his  colleague,  the 
botanist  Turpin,  full  and  satisfactory  investigation. 

The  main  conclusions  at  which  they  arrived  are  these. 
The  globular,  or  oval,  corpuscles  which  float  so  thickly  in 
1  Leeuwenhoek,  "Arcana  Natune'Detecta."  Ed.  Nov.,  1721. 


80  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [iv. 

the  yeast  as  to  make  it  muddy,  though  the  largest  are 
not  more  than  one  two -thousandth  of  an  inch  in  diameter, 
and  the  smallest  may  measure  less  than  one  seven- 
thousandth  of  an  inch,  are  living  organisms.  They 
multiply  with  great  rapidity,  by  giving  off  minute  buds, 
which  soon  attain  the  size  of  their  parent,  and  then  either 
become  detached  or  remain  united,  forming  the  compound 
globules  of  which  Leeuwenhoek  speaks,  though  the  con- 
stancy of  their  arrangement  in  sixes  existed  only  in  the 
worthy  Dutchman's  imagination. 

It  was  very  soon  made  out  that  these  yeast  organisms, 
to  which  Turpin  gave  the  name  of  Torula  cerevisice,  were 
more  nearly  allied  to  the  lower  Fungi  than  to  anything 
else.  Indeed  Turpin,  and  subsequently  Berkeley  and 
Hoffmann,  believed  that  they  had  traced  the  development 
of  the  Torula  into  the  well-known  and  very  common  mould 
— the  Penicillium  glaucum.  Other  observers  have  not 
succeeded  in  verifying  these  statements ;  and  my  own 
observations  lead  me  to  believe,  that  while  the  connection 
between  Torula  and  the  moulds  is  a  very  close  one,  it 
is  of  a  different  nature  from  that  which  has  been  supposed. 
I  have  never  been  able  to  trace  the  development  of  Torula 
into  a  true  mould ;  but  it  is  quite  easy  to  prove  that 
species  of  true  mould,  such  as  Penicillium,  when  sown 
in  an  appropriate  nidus,  such  as  a  solution  of  tartrate  of 
ammonia  and  yeast-ash,  in  water,  with  or  without  sugar, 
give  rise  to  Torulce,  similar  in  all  respects  to  T.  cerevisice, 
except  that  they  are,  on  the  average,  smaller.  Moreover, 
Bail  has  observed  the  development-' of  a  Torula  larger 
than  T.  cerevisicv,  from  a  Mucor,  a  mould  allied  to 
Penicillium. 

It  follows,  therefore,  that  the  Torulce,  or  organisms  of 
yeast,  are  veritable  plants ;  and  conclusive  experiments 
have  proved  that  the  power  which  causes  the  rearrange- 
ment of  the  molecules  of  the  sugar  is  intimately  connected 


iv.]  YEAST.  81 

with  the  life  and  growth  of  the  plant.  In  fact,  whatever 
arrests  the  vital  activity  of  the  plant  also  prevents  it 
from  exciting  fermentation. 

Such  being  the  facts  with  regard  to  the  nature  of  yeast, 
and  the  changes  which  it  effects  in  sugar,  how  are  they 
to  be  accounted  for?  Before  modern  chemistry  had 
come  into  existence,  Stahl,  stumbling,  with  the  stride  of 
genius,  upon  the  conception  which  lies  at  the  bottom  of 
all  modern  views  of  the  process,  put  forward  the  notion 
that  the  ferment,  being  in  a  state  of  internal  motion, 
communicated  that  motion  to  the  sugar,  and  thus  caused 
its  resolution  into  new  stubstances.  And  Lavoisier,  as 
we  have  seen,  adopts  substantially  the  same  view.  But 
Fabroni,  full  of  the  then  novel  conception  of  acids  and 
bases  and  double  decompositions,  propounded  the  hypo- 
thesis that  sugar  is  an  oxide  with  two  bases,  and  the 
ferment  a  carbonate  with  two  bases ;  that  the  carbon  of 
the  ferment  unites  with  the  oxygen  of  the  sugar,  and 
gives  rise  to  carbonic  acid ;  while  the  sugar,  uniting  with 
the  nitrogen  of  the  ferment,  produces  a  new  substance 
analogous  to  opium.  This  is  decomposed  by  distillation, 
and  gives  rise  to  alcohol.  Next,  in  1803,  The'nard  pro- 
pounded a  hypothesis  which  partakes  somewhat  of  the 
nature  of  both  Stahl's  and  Fabroni's  views.  "  I  do  not 
believe  with  Lavoisier,"  he  says,  "  that  all  the  carbonic 
acid  formed  proceeds  from  the  sugar.  How,  in  that  case, 
could  we  conceive  the  action  of  the  ferment  on  it  ?  I 
think  that  the  first  portions  of  the  acid  are  due  to  a 
combination  of  the  carbon  of  the  ferment  with  the  oxygen 
of  the  sugar,  and  that  it  is  by  carrying  off  a  portion  of 
oxygen  from  the  last  that  the  ferment  causes  the  fer- 
mentation to  commence — the  equilibrium  between  the 
principles  of  the  sugar  being  disturbed,  they  combine 
afresh  to  form  carbonic  acid  and  alcohol." 

The  three   views  here  before  us   may  be    familiarly 


82  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [iv. 

exemplified  by  supposing  the  sugar  to  be  a  card-house. 
According  to  Stahl,  the  ferment  is  somebody  who  knocks 
the  table,  and  shakes  the  card-house  down ;  according  to 
Fabroni,  the  ferment  takes  out  some  cards,  but  puts 
others  in  their  places  ;  according  to  Thenard,  the  ferment 
simply  takes  a  card  out  of  the  bottom  story,  the  result 
of  which  is  that  all  the  others  fall. 

As  chemistry  advanced,  facts  came  to  light  which  put 
a  new  face  upon  Stahl's  hypothesis,  and  gave  it  a  safer 
foundation  than  it  previously  possessed.  The  general 
nature  of  these  phenomena  may  be  thus  stated  : — A  body, 

A,  without  giving  to,    or   taking  from,    another  body, 

B,  any  material  particles,  causes  B  to  decompose  into 
other  substances,  C,  D,  E,  the  sum  of  the  weights  of 
which  is  equal  to  the  weight  of  B,  which  decomposes. 

Thus,  bitter  almonds  contain  two  substances,  amyg- 
dalin  and  synaptase,  which  can  be  extracted,  in  a  separate 
state,  from  the  bitter  almonds.  The  amygdalin  thus 
obtained,  if  dissolved  in  water,  undergoes  no  change  ; 
but  if  a  little  synaptase  be  added  to  the  solution,  the 
amygdalin  splits  up  into  bitter  almond  oil,  prussic  acid, 
and  a  kind  of  sugar. 

A  short  time  after  Cagniard  de  la  Tour  discovered  the 
yeast  plant,  Liebig,  struck  with  the  similarity  between 
this  and  other  such  processes  and  the  fermentation  of 
sugar,  put  forward  the  hypothesis  that  yeast  contains  a 
substance  which  acts  upon  sugar,  as  synaptase  acts  upon 
amygdalin.  And  as  the  synaptase  is  certainly  neither 
organized  nor  alive,  but  a  mere  chemical  substance, 
Liebig  treated  Cagniard  de  la  Tour's  discovery  with  no 
small  contempt,  and,  from  that  time  to  the  present,  has 
steadily  repudiated  the  notion  that  the  decomposition  of 
the  sugar  is,  in  any  sense,  the  result  of  the  vital  activity 
of  the  Torula.  But,  though  the  notion  that  the  Torula 
is  a  creature  which  eats  sugar  and  excretes  carbonic  acid 


iv.]  YtiAST.  83 

and  alcohol,  which  is  not  unjustly  ridiculed  in  the  most 
surprising  paper  that  ever  made  its  appearance  in  a 
grave  scientific  journal,1  may  be  untenable,  the  fact  that 
the  Tor  idee  are  alive,  and  that  yeast  does  not  excite  fer- 
mentation unless  it  contains  living  Tdrulce,  stands  fast. 
Moreover,  of  late  years,  the  essential  participation  of 
living  organisms  in  fermentation  other  than  the  alco- 
holic, has  been  clearly  made  out  by  Pasteur  and  other 
chemists. 

However,  it  may  be  asked,  is  there  any  necessary  op- 
position between  the  so-called  "vital"  and  the  strictly 
physico-chemical  views  of  fermentation  ?  It  is  quite  pos- 
sible that  the  living  Torula  may  excite  fermentation  in 
sugar,  because  it  constantly  produces,  as  an  essential  part 
of  its  vital  manifestations,  some  substance  which  acts 
upon  the  sugar,  just  as  the  synaptase  acts  upon  the 
amygdalin.  Or  it  may  be,  that,  without  the  formation 
of  any  such  special  substance,  the  physical  condition  of 
the  living  tissue  of  the  yeast  plant  is  sufficient  to  effect 
that  small  disturbance  of  the  equilibrium  of  the  particles 
of  the  sugar,  which  Lavoisier  thought  sufficient  to  eifect 
its  decomposition. 

Platinum  in  a  very  fine  state  of  division — -known  as 
platinum  black,  or  noir  de  platine — has  the  very  singu- 
lar property  of  causing  alcohol  to  change  into  acetic  acid 
with  great  rapidity.  The  vinegar  plant,  which  is  closely 

1  "  Das  entrathselte  Geheimniss  der  geistigen  Gahrung  (Vorlaufige  briefliche 
Mittheilung) "  is  the  title  of  an  anonymous  contribution  to  Wb'hler  and 
Liebig's  "  Annalen  der  Pharmacie"  for  1839,  in  which  a  somewhat  Rabelaisian 
imaginary  description  of  the  organization  of  the  "  yeast  animals  "  and  of  the 
manner  in  which  their  functions  are  performed,  is  given  with  a  circumstantiality 
worthy  of  the  author  of  Gulliver's  Travels.  As  a  specimen  of  the  writer's  humour, 
his  account  of  what  happens  when  fermentation  comes  to  an  end  may  suffice. 
"  Sobald  namlich  die  Thiere  keinen  Zucker  mehr  vorfmden,  so  fressen  sie  sich 
gegenseitig  selbst  auf,  was  durch  eine  eigene  Manipulation  geschieht ;  alles  wird 
verdaut  bis  auf  die  Eier,  welche  unverandert  durch  den  Darmkanal  hineingehen  j 
man  hat  zuletzt  wieder  gahrungsfahige  Hefe,  namlich  den  Saamen  der  Thiere. 
dor  iibrig  bleibt." 

5 


84  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [iv. 

allied  to  the  yeast  plant,  lias  a  similar  effect  upon  dilute 
alcohol,  causing  it  to  absorb  the  oxygen  of  the  air,  and 
become  converted  into  vinegar;  and  Liebig's  eminent 
opponent,  Pasteur,  who  has  done  so  much  for  the  theory 
and  the  practice  of  vinegar-making,  himself  suggests  that 
in  this  case — 

"  La  cause  du  phenomena  physique  qui  accompagne  la  vie  de  la 
plante  reside  dans  un  e"tat  physique  propre,  analogue  &  celui  du  noir 
de  platine.  Mais  il  est  essentiel  de  remarquer  que  cet  6tat  physique 
de  la  plante  est  etroitement  lie  avec  la  vie  de  cette  plante." 1 

ISTow,  if  the  vinegar  plant  gives  rise  to  the  oxidation 
of  alcohol,  on  account  of  its  merely  physical  constitution, 
it  is  at  any  rate  possible  that  the  physical  constitution 
of  the  yeast  plant  may  exert  a  decomposing  influence 
on  sugar. 

But,  without  presuming  to  discuss  a  question  which 
leads  us  into  the  very  arcana  of  chemistry,  the  present 
state  of  speculation  upon  the  modus  operandi  of  the 
yeast  plant  in  producing  fermentation  is  represented,  on 
the  one  hand,  by  the  Stahlian  doctrine,  supported  by 
Liebig,  according  to  which  the  atoms  of  the  sugar  are 
shaken  into  new  combinations,  either  directly  by  the 
Torulcs,  or  indirectly,  by  some  substance  formed  by 
them ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  by  the  Thenardian  doc- 
trine, supported  by  Pasteur,  according  to  which  the  yeast 
plant  assimilates  part  of  the  sugar,  and,  in  so  doing,  dis- 
turbs the  rest,  and  determines  its  resolution  into  the 
products  of  fermentation.  Perhaps  the  two  views  are 
not  so  much  opposed  as  they  seem  at  first  sight  to  be. 

But  the  interest  which  attaches  to  the  influence  of  the 
yeast  plants  upon  the  medium  in  which  they  live  and 
grow  does  not  arise  solely  from  its  bearing  upon  the 
theory  of  fermentation.  So  long  ago  as  1838,  Turpin 
compared  the  Tor  nice  to  the  ultimate  elements  of  the 

"Etudes  surles  Mycoderme?,"  Couiptes-Rendus,  liv.,  1S62. 


iv.]  YEAST.  85 

tissues  of  animals  and  plants — "  Les  organes  e'le'men- 
taires  de  leurs  tissus,  comparables  aux  petits  vege'taux 
des  levures  ordinaires,  sont  aussi  les  ddcompositeurs  des 
substances  qui  les  environnent." 

Almost  at  the  same  time,  and,  probably,  equally  guided 
by  his  study  of  yeast,  Schwann  was  engaged  in  those  re- 
markable investigations  into  the  form  and  development 
of  the  ultimate  structural  elements  of  the  tissues  of 
animals,  which  led  him  to  recognize  their  fundamental 
identity  with  the  ultimate  structural  elements  of  vege- 
table organisms. 

The  yeast  plant  is  a  mere  sac,  or  "  cell,"  containing  a 
semi-fluid  matter,  and  Schwann's  microscopic  analysis 
resolved  all  living  organisms,  in  the  long  run,  into  an 
aggregation  of  such  sacs  or  cells,  variously  modified ;  and 
tended  to  show,  that  all,  whatever  their  ultimate  compli- 
cation, begin  their  existence  in  the  condition  of  such 
simple  cells. 

In  his  famous  "  Mikroskopische  Untersuchungen " 
Schwann  speaks  of  Torula  as  a  "  cell ; "  and,  in  a  re- 
markable note  to  the  passage  in  which  he  refers  to  the 
yeast  plant,  Schwann  says : — 

"  I  have  been  unable  to  avoid  mentioning  fermentation^  because  it  is 
the  most  fully  and  exactly  known  operation  of  cells,  and  represents, 
in  the  simplest  fashion,  the  process  which  is  repeated  by  every  cell  of 
.the  living  body." 

In  other  words,  Schwann  conceives  that  every  cell  of 
the  living  body  exerts  an  influence  on  the  matter  which 
surrounds  and  permeates  it,  analogous  to  that  which  a 
Torula  exerts  on  the  saccharine  solution  by  which  it  is 
bathed.  A  wonderfully  suggestive  thought,  opening  up 
views  of  the  nature  of  the  chemical  processes  of  the 
living  body,  which  have  hardly  yet  received  all  the 
development  of  which  they  are  capable. 

Kant  defined  the  special  peculiarity  of  the  living  body 


86  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDEESSES.  [iv. 

to  be  that  the  parts  exist  for  the  sake  of  the  whole  and 
the  whole  for  the  sake  of  the  parts.  But  when  Turpin 
and  Schwann  resolved  the  living  body  into  an  aggrega- 
tion of  quasi-independent  cells,  each,  like  a  Torula, 
leading  its  own  life  and  having  its  own  laws  of  growth 
and  development,  the  aggregation  being  dominated  and 
kept  working  towards  a  definite  end  only  by  a  certain 
harmony  among  these  units,  or  by  the  superaddition  of 
a  controlling  apparatus,  such  as  a  nervous  system,  this 
conception  ceased  to  be  tenable.  The  cell  lives  for  its 
own  sake,  as  well  as  for  the  sake  of  the  whole  organism  ; 
and  the  cells,  which  float  in  the  blood,  live  at  its 
expense,  and  profoundly  modify  it,  are  almost  as  much 
independent  organisms  as  the  Torulce  which  float  in 
beer-wort. 

Schwann  burdened  his  enunciation  of  the  "  cell 
theory"  with  two  false  suppositions;  the  one,  that  the 
structures  he  called  "nucleus"  and  "cell-wall"  are 
essential  to  a  cell ;  the  other,  that  cells  are  usually 
formed  independently  of  other  cells;  but,  in  1839,  it 
was  a  vast  and  clear  gain  to  arrive  at  the  conception, 
that  the  vital  functions  of  all  the  higher  animals  and 
plants  are  the  resultant  of  the  forces  inherent  in  the 
innumerable  minute  cells  of  which  they  are  composed, 
and  that  each  of  them  is,  itself,  an  equivalent  of  one  of 
the  lowest  and  simplest  of  independent  living  beings — 
the  Torula. 

From  purely  morphological  investigations,  Turpin  and 
Schwann,  as  we  have  seen,  arrived  at  the  notion  of  the 
fundamental  unity  of  structure  of  living  beings.  And, 
before  long,  the  researches  of  chemists  gradually  led  up 
to  the  conception  of  the  fundamental  unity  of  their 
composition. 

So  far  back  as  1803,  Thenard  pointed  out,  in  most 
distinct  terms,  the  important  fact  that  yeast  contains  a 


iv.]  YEAST. 

nitrogenous  "  animal "  substance ;  and  that  such  a  sub- 
stance is  contained  in  all  ferments.  Before  him,  Fabroni 
and  Fourcroy  speak  of  the  " vegeto-animal "  matter  of 
yeast.  In  1844  Mulder  endeavoured  to  demonstrate 
that  a  peculiar  substance,  which  he  called  "protein/' 
was  essentially  characteristic  of  living  matter. 
In  1846,  Payen  writes  : — 

"  En  fin,  une  loi  sans  exception  me  semble  apparaitre  dans  les  faits 
nombreux  que  j'ai  observes  et  conduire  a  envisager  sous  un  nouveau 
jour  la  vie  ve*ge"tale ;  si  je  ne  m'abuse,  tout  ce  que  dans  les  tissus 
vegetaux  la  vue  directe  oil  amplifiee  nous  perrnet  de  discerner  sous  la 
forme  de  cellules  et  de  vaisseaux,  ne  represente  autre  chose  que  les 
enveloppes  protectrices,  les  reservoirs  et  les  conduits,  a  1'aide  desquuls 
les  corps  anirnes  qui  les  secretent  et  les  fagonnent,  se  logent, 
puisent  et  charrient  leurs  aliments,  deposent  et  isolent  les  matieres 
excre"tees." 

And  again : — 

"  Afin  de  completer  aujourd'hui  1'enonce  du  fait  ge"n6ral,  je  rappel- 
lerai  que  les  corps,  doue  des  fonctions  accomplies  dans  les  tissus  des 
plantes,  sont  forme's  des  elements  qui  constituent,  en  proportion  peu 
variable,  les  organismes  animaux;  qu'ainsi  Ton  est  conduit  a  reconnaitre 
une  immense  unite  de  composition  e*lementaire  dans  tous  les  corps 
vivants  de  la  nature."1 

In  the  year  (1846)  in  which  these  remarkable  passages 
were  published,  the  eminent  German  botanist,  Von  Mohl, 
invented  the  word  "  protoplasm/'  as  a  name  for  one  por- 
tion of  those  nitrogenous  contents  of  the  cells  of  living 
plants,  the  close  chemical  resemblance  of  which  to  the 
essential  constituents  of  living  animals  is  so  strongly 
indicated  by  Payen.  And  through  the  twenty-five  years 
that  have  passed,  since  the  matter  of  life  was  first  called 
protoplasm,  a  host  of  investigators,  among  whom  Cohn, 
Max  Schulze,  and  Ktihne  must  be  named  as  leaders,  have 
accumulated  evidence,  morphological,  physiological,  and 

1  "Mem.  sur  les  Developpements  des  V^getaux," &c.  -"Mem.  PnJsenWes." 
ix.  1846. 


88  CEITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [iv. 

chemical,  in  favour  of  that  "immense  unite  de  compo- 
sition elementaire  dans  tous  les  corps  vivants  de  la 
nature,"  into  which  Payen  had,  so  early,  a  clear  insight. 
As  far  back  as  1850,  Cohn  wrote,  apparently  without 
any  knowledge  of  what  Payen  had  said  before  him  : — 

"  The  protoplasm  of  the  botanist,  and  the  contractile  substance  and 
sarcode  of  the  zoologist,  must  be,  if  not  identical,  yet  in  a  high  degree 
analogous  substances.  Hence,  from  this  point  of  view,  the  difference 
between  animals  and  plants  consists  in  this ;  that,  in  the  latter,  the  con- 
tractile substance,  as  a  primordial  utricle,  is  enclosed  within  an  inert 
cellulose  membrane,  which  permits  it  only  to  exhibit  an  internal 
motion,  expressed  by  the  phenomena  of  rotation  and  circulation,  while, 
in  the  former,  it  is  not  so  enclosed.  The  protoplasm  in  the  form  of  the 
primordial  utricle  is,  as  it  were,  the  animal  element  in  the  plant,  but 
which  is  imprisoned,  and  only  becomes  free  in  the  animal ;  or,  to  strip 
off  the  metaphor  which  obscures  simple  thought,  the  energy  of  organic 
vitality  which  is  manifested  in  movement  is  especially  exhibited  by  a 
nitrogenous  contractile  substance,  which  in  plants  is  limited  and 
fettered  by  an  inert  membrane,  in  animals  not  so." 1 

In  1868,  thinking  that  an  untechnical  statement  of 
the  views  current  among  the  leaders  of  biological  science 
might  be  interesting  to  the  general  public,  I  gave  a 
lecture  embodying  them  in  Edinburgh.  Those  who 
have  not  made  the  mistake  of  attempting  to  approach 
biology,  either  by  the  high  d  priori  road  of  mere  philo- 
sophical speculation,  or  by  the  mere  low  d  posteriori 
lane  offered  by  the  tube  of  a  microscope,  but  have  taken 
the  trouble  to  become  acquainted  with  well-ascertained 
facts  and  with  their  history,  will  not  need  to  be  told 
that  in  what  I  had  to  say  "  as  regards  protoplasm "  in 
my  lecture  "  On  the  Physical  Basis  of  Life,"  there  was 
nothing  new ;  and,  as  I  hope,  nothing  that  the  present 
state  of  knowledge  does  not  justify  us  in  believing  to 
be  true.  Under  these  circumstances,  my  surprise  may 
be  imagined,  when  I  found,  that  the  mere  statement  of 

1  Colm,  "  Ueber  Protococcus  pluvialis,"  in  the  "  Nova  Acta  "  for  1850. 


iv.]  YEAST.  89 

facts  and  of  views,  long  familiar  to  me  as  part  of  the 
common  scientific  property  of  continental  workers,  raised 
a  sort  of  storm  in  this  country,  not  only  by  exciting 
the  wrath  of  unscientific  persons  whose  pet  prejudices 
they  seemed  to  touch,  but  by  giving  rise  to  quite 
superfluous  explosions  on  the  part  of  some  who  should 
have  been  better  informed. 

Dr.  Stirling,  for  example,  made  my  essay  the  subject 
of  a  special  critical  lecture,1  which  I  have  read  with  much 
interest,  though,  I  confess,  the  meaning  of  much  of  it 
remains  as  dark  to  me  as  does  the  "  Secret  of  Hegel " 
after  Dr.  Stirling's  elaborate  revelation  of  it.  Dr.  Stirling's 
method  of  dealing  with  the  subject  is  peculiar.  "  Proto- 
plasm "  is  a  question  of  history,  so  far  as  it  is  a  name ; 
of  fact,  so  far  as  it  is  a  thing.  Dr.  Stirling  has  not 
taken  the  trouble  to  refer  to  the  original  authorities  for 
his  history,  which  is  consequently  a  travesty ;  and  still 
less  has  he  concerned  himself  with  looking  at  the  facts, 
but  contents  himself  with  taking  them  also  at  second- 
hand. A  most  amusing  example  of  this  fashion  of 
dealing  with  scientific  statements  is  furnished  by  Dr. 
Stirling's  remarks  upon  my  account  of  the  protoplasm 
of  the  nettle  hair.  That  account  was  drawn  up  from 
careful  and  often-repeated  observation  of  the  facts.  Dr. 
Stirling  thinks  he  is  offering  a  valid  criticism,  when  he 
says  that  my  valued  friend  Professor  Strieker  gives  a 
somewhat  different  statement  about  protoplasm.  But 
why  in  the  world  did  not  this  distinguished  Hegelian 
look  at  a  nettle  hair  for  himself,  before  venturing  to 
speak  about  the  matter  at  all?  Why  trouble  himself 
about  what  either  Strieker  or  I  say,  when  any  tyro  can 
see  the  facts  for  himself,  if  he  is  provided  with  those 
not  rare  articles,  a  nettle  and  a  microscope  ?  But  I 
suppose  this  would  have  been  "  Aufkldrung  " — a  recur- 

1  Subsequently  published  under  the  title  of  "  As  regards  Protoplasm." 


90  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [iv. 

rence  to  the  base  common-sense  philosophy  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  which  liked  to  see  before  at  believed, 
and  to  understand  before  it  criticised.  Dr.  Stirling  winds 
up  his  paper  with  the  following  paragraph  : — 

"  In  short,  the  whole  position  of  Mr.  Huxley,  (1)  that  all  organisms 
consist  alike  of  the  same  life-matter,  (2)  which  life-matter  is,  for  its 
part,  due  only  to  chemistry,  must  be  pronounced  untenable — nor  less 
untenable  (3)  the  materialism  he  would  found  on  it." 

The  paragraph  contains  three  distinct  assertions  con- 
cerning my  views,  and  just  the  same  number  of  utter 
misrepresentations  of  them.  That  which  I  have  numbered 
(1)  turns  on  the  ambiguity  of  the  word  "  same/'  for  a 
discussion  of  which  I  would  refer  Dr.  Stirling  to  a  great 
hero  of  "Aufkldrung"  Archbishop  Whately ;  statement 
number  (2)  is,  in  my  judgment,  absurd,  and  certainly 
I  have  never  said  anything  resembling  it ;  while,  as  to 
number  (3),  one  great  object  of  my  essay  was  to  show 
that  what  is  called  "  materialism "  has  no  sound  philo- 
sophical basis ! 

As  we  have  seen,  the  study  of  yeast  has  led  inves- 
tigators face  to  face  with  problems  of  immense  interest 
in  pure  chemistry,  and  in  animal  and  vegetable  mor- 
phology. Its  physiology  is  not  less  rich  in  subjects  for 
inquiry.  Take,  for  example,  the  singular  fact  that  yeast 
will  increase  indefinitely  when  grown  in  the  dark,  in 
water  containing  only  tartrate  of  ammonia,  a  small  per- 
centage of  mineral  salts,  and  sugar.  Out  of  these 
materials  the  Torulce  will  manufacture  nitrogenous  pro- 
toplasm, cellulose,  and  fatty  matters,  in  any  quantity, 
although  they  are  wholly  deprived  of  those  rays  of  the 
sun,  the  influence  of  which  is  essential  to  the  growth  of 
ordinary  plants.  There  has  been  a  great  deal  of  specu- 
lation lately,  as  to  how  the  living  organisms  buried 
beneath  two  or  three  thousand  fathoms  of  water,  and 
therefore  in  all  probability  almost  deprived  of  light,  live. 


iv.]  YEAST.  91 

If  any  of  them  possess  the  same  powers  as  yeast  (and 
the  same  capacity  for  living  without  light  is  exhibited 
by  some  other  fungi)  there  would  seem  to  be  no  difficulty 
about  the  matter. 

Of  the  pathological  bearings  of  the  study  of  yeast,  and 
other  such  organisms,  I  have  spoken  elsewhere.  It  is 
certain  that,  in  some  animals,  devastating  epidemics  are 
caused  by  fungi  of  low  order — similar  to  those  of  which 
Torula  is  a  sort  of  offshoot.  It  is  certain  that  such 
diseases  are  propagated  by  contagion  and  infection,  in 
just  the  same  way  as  ordinary  contagious  and  infectious 
diseases  are  propagated.  Of  course,  it  does  not  follow 
from  this,  that  all  *  contagious  and  infectious  diseases  are 
caused  by  organisms  of  as  definite  and  independent  a 
character  as  the  Torula ;  but,  I  think,  it  does  follow  that 
it  is  prudent  and  wise  to  satisfy  oneself  in  each  parti- 
cular case,  that  the  "  germ  theory  "  cannot  and  will  not 
explain  the  facts,  before  having  recourse  to  hypotheses 
which  have  no  equal  support  from  analogy. 


V. 
ON   THE  FORMATION   OF   COAL. 

THE  lumps  of  coal  in  a  coal-scuttle  very  often  have  a 
roughly  cubical  form.  If  one  of  them  be  picked  out  and 
examined  with  a  little  care,  it  will  be  found  that  its  six 
sides  are  not  exactly  alike.  Two  opposite  sides  are  com- 
paratively smooth  and  shining,  while  the  other  four 
are  much  rougher,  and  are  marked  by  lines  which  run 
parallel  with  the  smooth  sides.  The  coal  readily  splits 
along  these  lines,  and  the  split  surfaces  thus  formed  are 
parallel  with  the  smooth  faces.  In  other  words,  there 
is  a  sort  of  rough  and  incomplete  stratification  in  the 
lump  of  coal,  as  if  it  were  a  book,  the  leaves  of  which 
had  stuck  together  very  closely. 

Sometimes  the  faces  along  which  the  coal  splits  arc 
not  smooth,  but  exhibit  a  thin  layer  of  dull,  charred  - 
looking  substance,  which  is  known  as  "mineral  charcoal." 

Occasionally  one  of  the  faces  of  a  lump  of  coal  will 
present  impressions,  which  are  obviously  those  of  the 
stem,  or  leaves,  of  a  plant ;  but  though  hard  mineral 
masses  of  pyrites,  and  even  fine  mud,  may  occur  here 
and  there,  neither  sand  nor  pebbles  are  met  with. 

When  the  coal  burns,  the  chief  ultimate  products  of 
its  combustion  are  carbonic  acid,  water,  and  ammoniacal 


v.]  ON  THE  FORMATION  OF  COAL.  93 

products,  which  escape  up  the  chimney ;  and  a  greater 
or  less  amount  of  residual  earthy  salts,  which  take  the 
form  of  ash.  These  products  are,  to  a  great  extent,  such 
as  would  result  from  the  burning  of  so  much  wood. 

These  properties  of  coal  may  be  made  out  without  any 
very  refined  appliances,  but  the  microscope  reveals  some- 
thing more.  Black  and  opaque  as  ordinary  coal  is,  slices 
of  it  become  transparent  if  they  are  cemented  in  Canada 
balsam,  and  rubbed  down  very  thin,  in  the  ordinary  way 
of  making  thin  sections  of  non-transparent  bodies.  But 
as  the  thin  slices,  made  in  this  way,  are  very  apt  to 
crack  and  break  into  fragments,  it  is  better  to  employ 
marine  glue  as  the  cementing  material.  By  the  use  of 
this  substance,  slices  of  considerable  size  and  of  extreme 
thinness  and  transparency  may  be  obtained.1 

Now  let  us  suppose  two  such  slices  to  be  prepared 
from  our  lump  of  coal — one  parallel  with  the  bedding, 
the  other  perpendicular  to  it ;  and  let  us  call  the  one 
the  horizontal,  and  the  other  the  vertical,  section.  The 
horizontal  section  will  present  more  or  less  rounded 
yellow  patches  and  streaks,  scattered  irregularly  through 
the  dark  brown,  or  blackish,  ground  substance ;  while 
the  vertical  section  will  exhibit  more  elongated  bars  and 
granules  of  the  same  yellow  materials,  disposed  in  lines 
which  correspond,  roughly,  with  the  general  direction  of 
the  bedding  of  the  coal. 

This  is  the  microscopic  structure  of  an  ordinary  piece 
of  coal.  But  if  a  great  series  of  coals,  from  different 
localities  and  seams,  or  even  from  different  parts  of  the 
same  seam,  be  examined,  this  structure  will  be  found  to 
vary  in  two  directions.  In  the  anthracitic,  or  stone- 
coals,  which  burn  like  coke,  the  yellow  matter  diminishes, 
and  the  ground  substance  becomes  more  predominant, 

1  My  assistant  in  the  Museum  of  Practical  Geology,  Mr.  Newton,  invented 
this  excellent  method  of  obtaining  thin  slices  of  coal. 


94  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDEESSES.  [v. 

and  blacker,  and  more  opaque,  until  it  becomes  impos- 
sible to'giinci  a  section  thin  enough  to  be  translucent ; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  in  such  as  the  "Better-Bed" 
coal  of  the  neighbourhood  of  Bradford,  which  burns  with 
much  flame,  the  coal  is  of  a  far  lighter  colour,  and  trans- 
parent sections  are  very  easily  obtained.  In  the  browner 
parts  of  this  coal,  sharp  eyes  will  readily  detect  multi- 
tudes of  curious  little  coin-shaped  bodies,  of  a  yellowish 
brown  colour,  embedded  in  the  dark  brown  ground  sub- 
stance. On  the  average,  these  little  brown  bodies  may 
have  a  diameter  of  about  one-twentieth  of  an  inch. 
They  lie  with  their  flat  surfaces  nearly  parallel  with  the 
two  smooth  faces  of  the  block  in  which  they  are  con- 
tained ;  and,  on  one  side  of  each,  there  may  be  discerned 
a  figure,  consisting  of  three  straight  linear  marks,  which 
radiate  from  the  centre  of  the  disk,  but  do  not  quite 
reach  its  circumference.  In  the  horizontal  section  these 
disks  are  often  converted  into  more  or  less  complete 
rings ;  while  in  the  vertical  sections  they  appear  like 
thick  hoops,  the  sides  of  which  have  been  pressed  to- 
gether. The  disks  are,  therefore,  flattened  bags ;  and 
favourable  sections  show  that  the  three-rayed  marking  is 
the  expression  of  three  clefts,  which  penetrate  one  wall 
of  the  bag. 

The  sides  of  the  bags  are  sometimes  closely  approxi- 
mated; but,  when  the  bags  are  less  flattened,  their 
cavities  are,  usually,  filled  with  numerous,  irregularly 
rounded,  hollow  bodies,  having  the  same  kind  of  wall  as 
the  large  ones,  but  not  more  than  one  seven-hundredth 
of  an  inch  in  diameter. 

In  favourable  specimens,  again,  almost  the  whole 
ground  substance  appears  to  be  made  up  of  similar 
bodies — more  or  less  carbonized  or  blackened — and,  in 
these,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that,  with  the  exception  of 
patches  of  mineral  charcoal,  here  and  there,  the  whole 


v.]  ON  THE  FORMATION  OF  COAL. 


mass  of  the  coal  is  made  up  of 
larger  and  of  the  smaller  sacs. 

But,  in  one  and  the  same  slice,  every  transition  can 
be  observed  from  this  structure  to  that  which  has  been 
described  as  characteristic  of  ordinary  coal.  The  latter 
appears  to  rise  out  of  the  former,  by  the  breaking-up 
and  increasing  carbonization  of  the  larger  and  the 
smaller  sacs.  And,  in  the  anthracitic  coals,  this  process 
appears  to  have  gone  to  such  a  length,  as  to  destroy  the 
original  structure  altogether,  and  to  replace  it  by  a  com- 
pletely carbonized  substance. 

Thus  coal  may  be  said,  speaking  broadly,  to  be  com- 
posed of  two  constituents :  firstly,  mineral  charcoal ; 
and,  secondly,  coal  proper.  The  nature  of  the  mineral 
charcoal  has  long  since  been  determined.  Its  structure 
shows  it  to  consist  of  the  remains  of  the  stems  and 
leaves  of  plants,  reduced  to  little  more  than  their  carbon. 
Again,  some  of  the  coal  is  made  up  of  the  crushed  and 
flattened  bark,  or  outer  coat,  of  the  stems  of  plants,  the 
inner  wood  of  which  has  completely  decayed  away.  But 
what  I  may  term  the  "saccular  matter"  of  the  coal, 
which,  either  in  its  primary  or  in  its  degraded  form,  con- 
stitutes by  far  the  greater  part  of  all  the  bituminous 
coals  I  have  examined,  is  certainly  not  mineral  charcoal ; 
nor  is  its  structure  that  of  any  stem  or  leaf.  Hence  its 
real  nature  is,  at  first,  by  no  means  apparent,  and  has 
been  the  subject  of  much  discussion. 

The  first  person  who  threw  any  light  upon  the  pro- 
blem, as  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  discover,  was  the 
well-known  geologist,  Professor  Morris.  It  is  now  thirty- 
four  years  since  he  carefully  described  and  figured  the 
coin-shaped  bodies,  or  larger  sacs,  as  I  have  called  them, 
in  a  note  appended  to  the  famous  paper  "  On  the  Coal- 
brookdale  Coal-Field,"  published  at  that  time,  by  the 
present  President  of  the  Geological  Society,  Mr.  Prest- 


96  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [v. 

wich.  With  much  sagacity,  Professor  Morris  divined  the 
real  nature  of  these  bodies,  and  boldly  affirmed  them 
to  be  the  spore-cases  of  a  plant  allied  to  the  living 
club-mosses. 

But  discovery  sometimes  makes  a  long  halt ;  and  it  is 
only  a  few  years  since  Mr.  Carruthers  determined  the 
plant  (or  rather  one  of  the  plants)  which  produces  these 
spore-cases,  by  finding  the  discoidal  sacs  still  adherent 
to  the  leaves  of  the  fossilized  cone  which  produced  them. 
He  gave  the  name  of  Flemingites  gracilis  to  the  plant 
of  which  the  cones  form  a  part.  The  branches  and  stem 
of  this  plant  are  not  yet  certainly  known,  but  there  is 
no  sort  of  doubt  that  it  was  closely  allied  to  the  Lepi- 
dodendron,  the  remains  of  which  abound  in  the  coal 
formation.  The  Lepidodendra  were  shrubs  and  trees 
which  put  one  more  in  mind  of  an  Araucaria  than  of 
any  other  familiar  plant ;  and  the  ends  of  the  fruiting 
branches  were  terminated  by  cones,  or  catkins,  somewhat 
like  the  bodies  so  named  in  a  fir,  or  a  willow.  These 
conical  fruits,  however,  did  not  produce  seeds ;  but  the 
leaves  of  which  they  were  composed  bore  upon  their 
surfaces  sacs  full  of  spores  or  sporangia,  such  as  those 
one  sees  on  the  under  surface  of  a  bracken  leaf.  Now,  it 
is  these  sporangia  of  the  Lepidodendroid  plant  Fleming- 
ites which  were  identified  by  Mr.  Carruthers  with  the 
free  sporangia  described  by  Professor  Morris,  which  are 
the  same  as  the  large  sacs  of  which  I  have  spoken.  And, 
more  than  this,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  small  sacs 
are  the  spores,  which  were  originally  contained  in  the 
sporangia. 

The  living  club-mosses  are,  for  the  most  part,  insigni- 
ficant and  creeping  herbs,  which,  superficially,  very 
closely  resemble  true  mosses,  and  none  of  them  reach 
more  than  two  or  three  feet  in  height.  But,  in  their 
essential  structure,  they  very  closely  resemble  the  earliest 


v.]  ON  THE  FORMATION  OF  COAL.  97 

Lcpidodendroid  trees  of  the  coal :  their  steins  and  leaves 
arc  similar ;  so  are  their  cones  ;  and  no  less  like  are  the 
sporangia  and  spores ;  while  even  in  their  size,  th,e  spores 
of  the  Lepidodendron  and  those  of  the  existing  Lycopo- 
dium,  or  club-moss,  very  closely  approach  one  another. 

Thus,  the  singular  conclusion  is  forced  upon  us,  that 
the  greater  and  the  smaller  sacs  of  the  "  Better-Bed " 
and  other  coals,  in  which  the  primitive  structure  is  well 
preserved,  are  simply  the  sporangia  and  spores  of  certain 
plants,  many  of  which  were  closely  allied  to  the  existing 
club-mosses.  And  if,  as  I  believe,  it  can  be  demonstrated 
that  ordinary  coal  is  nothing  but  "  saccular  "  coal  which 
has  undergone  a  certain  amount  of  that  alteration  which, 
if  continued,  would  convert  it  into  anthracite  ;  then,  the 
•  conclusion  is  obvious,  that  the  great  mass  of  the  coal 
we  burn  is  the  result  of  the  accumulation  of  the  spores 
and  spore-cases  of  plants,  other  parts  of  which  have 
furnished  the  carbonized  stems  and  the  mineral  char- 
coal, or  have  left  their  impressions  on  the  surfaces  of 
the  layer. 

Of  the  multitudinous  speculations  which,  at  various 
times,  have  been  entertained  respecting  the  origin  and 
mode  of  formation  of  coal,  several  appear  to  be  nega- 
tived, and  put  out  of  court,  by  the  structural  facts  the 
significance  of  which  I  have  endeavoured  to  explain. 
These  facts,  for  example,  do  not  permit  us  to  suppose 
that  coal  is  an  accumulation  of  peaty  matter,  as  some 
have  held. 

Again,  the  late  Professor  Quekett  was  one  of  the  first 
observers  who  gave  a  correct  description  of  what  I  have 
termed  the  "saccular"  structure  of  coal;  and,  rightly 
perceiving  that  this  structure  was  something  quite  dif- 
ferent from  that  of  any  known  plant,  he  imagined  that 
it  proceeded  from  some  extinct  vegetable  organism  which 
was  peculiarly  abundant  amongst  the  coal-forming  plants. 


98  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [r. 

But  this  explanation  is  at  once  shown  to  be  untenable 
when  the  smaller  and  the  larger  sacs  are  proved  to  be 
spores  or  sporangia. 

Some,  once  more,  have  imagined  that  coal  was  of  sub- 
marine origin  ;  and  though  the  notion  is  amply  and  easily 
refuted  by  other  considerations,  it  may  be  worth  while 
to  remark,  that  it  is  impossible  to  comprehend  how  a 
mass  of  light  and  resinous  spores  should  have  reached 
the  bottom  of  the  sea,  or  should  have  stopped  in  that 
position  if  they  had  got  there. 

At  the  same  time,  it  is  proper  to  remark  that  I  do 
not  presume  to  suggest  that  all  coal  must  needs  have 
the  same  structure ;  or  that  there  may  not  be  coals  in 
which  the  proportions  of  wood  and  spores,  or  spore-cases, 
are  very  different  from  those  which  I  have  examined. 
All  I  repeat  is,  that  none  of  the  coals  which  have  come 
under  my  notice  have  enabled  me  to  observe  such  a  dif- 
ference. But,  according  to  Principal  Dawson,  who  has 
so  sedulously  examined  the  fossil  remains  of  plants  in 
North  America,  it  is  otherwise  with  the  vast  accumula- 
tions of  coal  in  that  country. 

"The  true  coal,"  says  Dr.  Dawson,  "consists  principally  of  the 
flattened  bark  of  Sigillarioid  and  other  trees,  intermixed  with  leaves  of 
Ferns  and  Cordaites,  and  other  herbaceous  debris,  and  with  fragments 
of  decayed  wood,  constituting  '  mineral  charcoal,'  all  these  materials 
having  manifestly  alike  grown  and  accumulated  where  we  find  them." l 

When  I  had  the  pleasure  of  seeing  Principal  Dawson  in 
London  last  summer,  I  showed  him  my  sections  of  coal, 
and  begged  him  to  re-examine  some  of  the  American 
coals  on  his  return  to  Canada,  with  an  eye  to  the  presence 
of  spores  and  sporangia,  such  as  I  was  able  to  show  him 
in  our  English  and  Scotch  coals.  He  has  been  good 
enough  to  do  so ;  and  in  a  letter  dated  September  26th, 
1870,  he  informs  me  that — 

1  "  Acadian  Geology,"  2nd  edition,  p.  138. 


v.]  ON  THE  FORMATION  OF  COAL.  09 

"  Indications  of  spore-cases  are  rare,  except  in  certain  coarse  shaly 
coals  and  portions  of  coals,  and  in  the  roofs  of  the  seams.  The  most 
marked  case  I  have  yet  met  with  is  the  shaly  coal  referred  to  as  con- 
taining Sporangites  in  my  paper  on  the  conditions  of  accumulation  of 
coal  (Journal  of  the  Geological  Society,  vol.  xxii.  pp.  115,  139,  and 
1G5).  The  purer  coals  certainly  consist  principally  of  cubical  tissues 
with  some  true  woody  matter,  and  the  spore-cases,  &c.,  are  chiefly  in 
the  coarse  and  shaly  layers.  This  is  my  old  doctrine  in  my  two  papers 
in  the  Journal  of  the  Geological  Society,  and  I  see  nothing  to  modify  it. 
Your  observations,  however,  make  it  probable  that  the  frequent  clear 
spots  in  the  cannels  are  spore-cases." 

Dr.  Dawson's  results  are  the  more  remarkable,  as  the 
numerous  specimens  of  British  coal,  from  various  locali- 
ties, which  I  have  examined,  tell  one  tale  as  to  the 
predominance  of  the  spore  and  sporangium  element  in 
their  composition  ;  and  as  it  is  exactly  in  the  finest  and 
purest  coals,  such  as  the  "  Better-Bed  "  coal  of  Lowmoor, 
that  the  spores  and  sporangia  obviously  constitute  almost 
the  entire  mass  of  the  deposit. 

Coal,  such  as  that  which  has  been  described,  is  always 
found  in  sheets,  or  "  seams,"  varying  from  a  fraction  of 
an  inch  to  many  feet  in  thickness,  enclosed  in  the  sub- 
stance of  the  earth  at  very  various  depths,  between  beds 
of  rock  of  different  kinds.  As  a  rule,  every  seam  of 
coal  rests  upon  a  thicker,  or  thinner,  bed  of  clay,  which 
is  known  as  "  under-day."  These  alternations  of  beds 
of  coal,  clay,  and  rock  may  be  repeated  many  times, 
and  are  known  as  the  "  coal-measures  ; "  and  in  some 
regions,  as  in  South  Wales  and  in  Nova  Scotia,  the 
coal-measures  attain  a  thickness  of  twelve  or  fourteen 
thousand  feet,  and  enclose  eighty  or  a  hundred  seams 
of  coal,  each  with  its  under-clay,  and  separated  from 
those  above  and  below  by  beds  of  sandstone  and  shale. 

The  position  of  the  beds  which  constitute  the  coal- 
measures  is  infinitely  diverse.  Sometimes  they  are  tilted 
up  vertically,  sometimes  they  are  horizontal,  sometimes 
curved  into  great  basins ;  sometimes  they  come  to  the 


100  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [v. 

surface,  sometimes  they  are  covered  up  by  thousands 
of  feet  of  rock.  But,  whatever  their  present  position, 
there  is  abundant  and  conclusive  evidence  that  every 
under-clay  was  once  a  surface  soil.  Not  only  do  car- 
bonized root-fibres  frequently  abound  in  these  under- 
clays ;  but  the  stools  of  trees,  the  trunks  of  which  are 
broken  off  and  confounded  with  the  bed  of  coal,  have 
been  repeatedly  found  passing  into  radiating  roots,  still 
embedded  in  the  under-clay.  On  many  parts  of  the 
coast  of  England,  what  are  commonly  known  as  "  sub- 
marine forests"  are  to  be  seen  at  low  water.  They 
consist,  for  the  most  part,  of  short  stools  of  oak,  beech, 
and  fir  trees,  still  fixed  by  their  long  roots  in  the  bed 
of  blue  clay  in  which  they  originally  grew.  If  one  of 
these  submarine  forest  beds  should  be  gradually  depressed 
and  covered  up  by  new  deposits,  it  would  present  just 
the  same  characters  as  an  under-clay  of  the  coal,  if  the 
Sigillaria,  and  Lepidodendron  of  the  ancient  world  were 
substituted  for  the  oak,  or  the  beech,  of  our  own  times. 

In  a  tropical  forest,  at  the  present  day,  the  trunks  of 
fallen  trees,  and  the  stools  of  such  trees  as  may  have 
been  broken  by  the  violence  of  storms,  remain  entire  for 
but  a  short  time.  Contrary  to  what  might  be  expected, 
the  dense  wood  of  the  tree  decays,  and  suffers  from  the 
ravages  of  insects,  more  swiftly  than  the  bark.  And  the 
traveller,  setting  his  foot  on  a  prostrate  trunk,  finds  that 
it  is  a  mere  shell,  which  breaks  under  his  weight,  and 
lands  his  foot  amidst  the  insects,  or  the  reptiles,  which 
have  sought  food  or  refuge  within. 

The  trees  of  the  coal  forests  present  parallel  condi- 
tions. When  the  fallen  trunks  which  have  entered  into 
the  composition  of  the  bed  of  coal  are  identifiable,  they 
are  mere  double  shells  of  bark,  flattened  together  in 
consequence  of  the  destruction  of  the  woody  core ;  and 
Sir  Charles  Lyell  and  Principal  Dawson  discovered,  in  the 


v.]  ON  THE  FORMATION  OF  COAL.  101 

hollow  stools  of  coal  trees  of  Nova  Scotia,  the  remains 
of  snails,  millipedes,  and  salamander-like  creatures,  em- 
bedded in  a  deposit  of  a  different  character  from  that 
which  surrounded  the  exterior  of  the  trees.  Thus,  in  en- 
deavouring to  comprehend  the  formation  of  a  seam  of 
coal,  we  must  try  to  picture  to  ourselves  a  thick  forest, 
formed  for  the  most  part  of  trees  like  gigantic  club- 
mosses,  mares'-tails,  and  tree  ferns,  with  here  and  there 
some  that  had  more  resemblance  to  our  existing  yews 
and  fir-trees.  We  must  suppose  that,  as  the  seasons 
rolled  by,  the  plants  grew  and  developed  their  spores  and 
seeds ;  that  they  shed  these  in  enormous  quantities,  which 
accumulated  on  the  ground  beneath ;  and  that,  every  now 
and  then,  they  added  a  dead  frond  or  leaf;  or,  at  longer 
intervals,  a  rotten  branch,  or  a  dead  trunk,  to  the  mass. 

A  certain  proportion  of  the  spores  and  seeds  no  doubt 
fulfilled  their  obvious  function,  and,  carried  by  the  wind 
to  unoccupied  regions,  extended  the  limits  of  the  forest ; 
many  might  be  washed  away  by  rain  into  streams,  and 
be  lost ;  but  a  large  portion  must  have  remained,  to 
accumulate  like  beech-mast,  or  acorns,  beneath  the  trees 
of  a  modern  forest 

But,  in  this  case,  it  may  be  asked,  why  does  not  our 
English  coal  consist  of  stems  and  leaves  to  a  much 
greater  extent  than  it  does  ?  What  is  the  reason  of  the 
predominance  of  the  spores  and  spore-cases  in  it  ? 

A  ready  answer  to  this  question  is  afforded  by  the 
study  of  a  living  full-grown  club-moss.  Shake  it  upon 
a  piece  of  paper,  and  it  emits  a  cloud  of  fine  dust,  which 
falls  over  the  paper,  and  is  the  well-known  Lycopodium 
powder.  Now  this  powder  used  to  be,  and  I  believe 
still  is,  employed  for  two  objects,  which  seem  at  first 
sight  to  have  no  particular  connection  with  one  another. 
It  is,  or  was,  employed  in  making  lightning,  and  in 
making  pills.  The  coats  of  the  spores  contain  so  much 


102  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [v. 

resinous  matter,  that  a  pinch  of  Lycopodium  powder, 
thrown  through  the  flame  of  a  candle,  burns  with  an  in- 
stantaneous flash,  which  has  long  done  duty  for  lightning 
on  the  stage.  And  the  same  character  makes  it  a  capital 
coating  for  pills  ;  for  the  resinous  powder  prevents  the 
drug  from  being  wetted  by  the  saliva,  and  thus  bars 
the  nauseous  flavour  from  the  sensitive  papilla  of  the 
tongue. 

But  this  resinous  matter,  which  lies  in  the  walls  of 
the  spores  and  sporangia,  is  a  substance  not  easily  altered 
by  air  and  water,  and  hence  tends  to  preserve  these 
bodies,  just  as  the  bituminized  cerecloth  preserves  an 
Egyptian  mummy  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  merely 
woody  stem  and  leaves  tend  to  rot,  as  fast  as  the  wood 
of  the  mummy's  coffin  has  rotted.  Thus  the  mixed 
heap  of  spores,  leaves,  and  stems  in  the  coal-forest  would 
be  persistently  searched  by  the  long- continued  action  of 
air  and  rain  ;  the  leaves  and  stems  would  gradually  be 
reduced  to  little  but  their  carbon,  or,  in  other  words,  to 
the  condition  of  mineral  charcoal  in  which  we  find  them  ; 
while  the  spores  and  sporangia  remained  as  a  compara- 
tively unaltered  and  compact  residuum. 

There  is,  indeed,  tolerably  clear  evidence  that  the  coal 
must,  under  some  circumstances,  have  been  converted 
into  a  substance  hard  enough  to  be  rolled  into  pebbles, 
while  it  yet  lay  at  the  surface  of  the  earth  ;  for  in  some 
seams  of  coal,  the  courses  of  rivulets,  which  must  have 
been  living  water,  while  the  stratum  in  which  their 
remains  are  found  was  still  at  the  surface,  have  been 
observed  to  contain  rolled  pebbles  of  the  very  coal 
through  which  the  stream  has  cut  its  way. 

The  structural  facts  are  such  as  to  leave  no  alternative 
but  to  adopt  the  view  of  the  origin  of  such  coal  as  I  have 
described,  which  has  just  been  stated ;  but,  happily,  the 
process  is  not  without  analogy  at  the  present  day.  I 


v.]  ON  THE  FORMATION  OF  COAL.  103 

possess  a  specimen  of  what  is  called  "  white  coal"  from 
Australia.  It  is  an  inflammable  material,  burning  with 
a  bright  flame,  and  having  much  the  consistence  and 
appearance  of  oat-cake,  which,  I  am  informed,  covers  a 
considerable  area.  It  consists,  almost  entirely,  of  a 
compacted  mass  of  spores  and  spore-cases.  But  the  fine 
particles  of  blown  sand  which  are  scattered  through  it, 
show  that  it  must  have  accumulated,  subaerially,  upon 
the  surface  of  a  soil  covered  by  a  forest  of  cryptogamous 
plants,  probably  tree-ferns. 

As  regards  this  important  point  of  the  subaerial  region 
of  coal,  I  am  glad  to  find  myself  in  entire  accordance 
with  Principal  Dawson,  who  bases  his  conclusions  upon 
other,  but  no  less  forcible,  considerations.  In  a  passage, 
which  is  the  continuation  of  that  already  cited,  lie 
writes : — 

"  (3)  The  microscopical  structure  and  chemical  composition  of  the 
beds  of  cannel  coal  and  earthy  bitumen,  and  of  the  more  highly  bitu- 
minous and  carbonaceous  shale,  show  them  to  have  been  of  the  nature 
of  the  fine  vegetable  mud  which  accumulates  in  the  ponds  and  shallow- 
lakes  of  modern  swamps.  When  such  fine  vegetable  sediment  is  mixed, 
as  is  often  the  case,  with  clay,  it  becomes  similar  to  the  bituminous 
limestone  and  calcareo-bituminous  shales  of  the  coal-measures,  (4) 
A  few  of  the  under-clays,  which  support  beds  of  coal,  are  of  the 
nature  of  the  vegetable  mud  above  referred  to ;  but  the  greater  part 
are  argillo-arenaceous  in  composition,  with  little  vegetable  matter,  and 
bleached  by  the  drainage  from  them  of  water  containing  the  products 
of  vegetable  decay.  They  are,  in  short,  loamy  or  clay  soils,  and  must 
have  been  sufficiently  above  water  to  admit  of  drainage.  The  absence 
of  sulphurets,  and  the  occurrence  of  carbonate  of  iron  in  connection 
with  them,  prove  that,  when  they  existed  as  soils,  rain-water,  and  not 
sea-water,  percolated  them.  (5)  The  coal  and  the  fossil  forests  present 
many  evidences  of  subaerial  conditions.  Most  of  the  erect  and 
prostrate  trees  had  become  hollow  shells  of  bark  before  they  were 
finally  embedded,  and  their  wood  had  broken  into  cubical  pieces  of 
mineral  charcoal.  Land-snails  and  galley-worms  (Xylobius)  crept  into 
them,  and  they  became  dens,  or  traps,  for  reptiles.  Large  quantities 
of  mineral  charcoal  occur  on  the  surface  of  all  the  large  beds  of  coal. 
None  of  these  appearances  could  have  been  produced  by  subaqueous 


104  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [v. 

action.  (6)  Though  the  roots  of  the  Sigillaria  bear  more  resemblance 
to  the  rhizomes  of  certain  aquatic  plants ;  yet,  structurally,  they  are 
absolutely  identical  with  the  roots  of  Cycads,  which  the  stems  also 
resemble.  Further,  the  SigiUarice  grew  on  the  same  soils  which 
supported  Conifers,  Lepidodendra,  Cordaites,  and  Ferns — plants  which 
could  not  have  grown  in  water.  Again,  with  the  exception  perhaps  of 
some  Pinnularice  and  Asterophyllites,  there  is  a  remarkable  absence 
from  the  coal  measures  of  any  form  of  properly  aquatic  vegetation. 
(7)  The  occurrence  of  marine,  or  brackish-water  animals,  in  the  roofs 
of  coal-beds,  or  even  in  the  coal  itself,  affords  no  evidence  of  sub- 
aqueous accumulation,  since  the  same  thing  occurs  in  the  case  of 
modern  submarine  forests.  For  these  and  other  reasons,  some  of 
which  are  more  fully  stated  in  the  papers  already  referred  to,  while  I 
admit  that  the  areas  of  coal  accumulation  were  frequently  submerged, 
I  must  maintain  that  the  true  coal  is  a  subaerial  accumulation  by 
vegetable  growth  on  soils,  wet  and  swampy  it  is  true,  but  not 
submerged." 

I  am  almost  disposed  to  doubt  whether  it  is  necessary 
to  make  the  concession  of  "  wet  and  swampy ; "  other- 
wise, there  is  nothing  that  I  know  of  to  be  said  against 
this  excellent  conspectus  of  the  reasons  for  believing  in 
the  subaerial  origin  of  coal. 

But  the  coal  accumulated  upon  the  area  covered  by 
one  of  the  great  forests  of  the  carboniferous  epoch  would, 
in  course  of  time,  have  been  wasted  away  by  the  small, 
but  constant,  wear  and  tear  of  rain  and  streams,  had  the 
land  which  supported  it  remained  at  the  same  level,  or 
been  gradually  raised  to  a  greater  elevation.  And,  no 
doubt,  as  much  coal  as  now  exists  has  been  destroyed, 
after  its  formation,  in  this  way.  What  are  now  known 
as  coal  districts  owe  their  importance  to  the  fact  that 
they  were  areas  of  slow  depression,  during  a  greater  or 
less  portion  of  the  carboniferous  epoch  ;  and  that,  in 
virtue  of  this  circumstance,  Mother  Earth  was  enabled 
to  cover  up  her  vegetable  treasures,  and  preserve  them 
from  destruction. 

Wherever  a  coal-field  now  exists,  there  must  formerly 
have  been  free  access  for  a  great  river,  or  for  a  shallow 


v.]  ON  THE  FORMATION  OF  COAL.  105 

sea,  bearing  sediment  in  the  shape  of  sand  and  mud. 
When  the  coal-forest  area  became  slowly  depressed,  the 
waters  must  have  spread  over  it,  and  have  deposited 
their  burden  upon  the  surface  of  the  bed  of  coal,  in  the 
form  of  layers,  which  are  now  converted  into  shale,  or 
sandstone.  Then  followed  a  period  of  rest,  in  which  the 
superincumbent  shallow  waters  became  completely  filled 
up,  and  finally  replaced,  by  fine  mud,  which  settled 
down  into  a  new  under-clay,  and  furnished  the  soil  for 
a  fresh  forest  growth.  This  flourished,  and  heaped  up 
its  spores  and  wood  into  coal,  until  the  stage  of  slow 
depression  recommenced.  And,  in  some  localities,  as  I 
have  mentioned,  the  process  was  repeated  until  the  first 
of  the  alternating  beds  had  sunk  to  near  three  miles 
below  its  original  level  at  the  surface  of  the  earth. 

In  reflecting  on  the  statement,  thus  briefly  made,  of 
the  main  facts  connected  with  the  origin  of  the  coal 
formed  during  the  carboniferous  epoch,  two  or  three 
considerations  suggest  themselves. 

In  the  first  place,  the  great  phantom  of  geological  time 
rises  before  the  student  of  this,  as  of  all  other,  fragments 
of  the  history  of  our  earth — springing  irrepressibly  out 
of  the  facts,  like  the  Djin  from  the  jar  which  the  fisher- 
man so  incautiously  opened ;  and  like  the  Djin  again, 
being  vaporous,  shifting,  and  indefinable,  but  unmis- 
takably gigantic.  However  modest  the  bases  of  one's 
calculation  may  be,  the  minimum  of  time  assignable  to 
the  coal  period  remains  something  stupendous. 

Principal  Dawson  is  the  last  person  likely  to  be  guilty 
of  exaggeration  in  this  matter,  and  it  will  be  well  to 
consider  what  he  has  to  say  about  it : — 

"  The  rate  of  accumulation  of  coal  was  very  slow.  The  climate  of 
the  period,  in  the  northern  temperate  zone,  was  of  such  a  character 
that  the  true  conifers  show  rings  of  growth,  not  larger,  nor  much  less 
Ustinct,  than  those  of  many  of  their  modern  congeners.  The  Sigil- 


106  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [v. 

larice  and  Catamites  *rere  not,  as  often  supposed,  composed  wholly,  or 
even  principally,  of  lax  and  soft  tissues,  or  necessarily  short-lived. 
The  former  had,  it  is  true,  a  very  thick  inner  bark  ;  but  their  dense 
woody  axis,  their  thick  and  nearly  imperishable  outer  bark,  and  their 
scanty  and  rigid  foliage,  would  indicate  no  very  rapid  growth  or  decay. 
In  the  case  of  the  Siffillarice,  the  variations  in  the  leaf-scars  in 
different  parts  of  the  trunk,  the  intercalation  of  new  ridges  at  the 
surface  representing  that  of  new  woody  wedges  in  the  axis,  the  trans- 
verse marks  left  by  the  stages  of  upward  growth,  all  indicate  that 
several  years  must  have  been  required  for  the  growth  of  stems  of 
moderate  size.  The  enormous  roots  of  these  trees,  and  the  condition 
of  the  coal-swamps,  must  have  exempted  them  from  the  danger  of 
being  overthrown  by  violence.  They  probably  fell  in  successive 
generations  from  natural  decay  ;  and  making  every  allowance  for  other 
materials,  we  may  safely  assert  that  every  foot  of  thickness  of  pure 
bituminous  coal  implies  the  quiet  growth  and  fall  of  at  least  fifty 
generations  of  Sigillarice,  and  therefore  an  undisturbed  condition  of 
forest  growth  enduring  through  many  centuries.  Further,  there  is 
evidence  that  an  immense  amount  of  loose  parenchymatous  tissue,  and 
even  of  wood,  perished  by  decay,  and  we  do  not  know  to  what  extent 
even  the  most  durable  tissues  may  have  disappeared  in  this  way ;  so 
that,  in  many  coal-seams,  we  may  have  only  a  very  small  part  of  the 
vegetable  matter  produced." 

Undoubtedly  the  force  of  these  reflections  is  not 
diminished  when  the  bituminous  coal,  as  in  Britain, 
consists  of  accumulated  spores  and  spore-cases,  rather 
than  of  stems.  But,  suppose  we  adopt  Principal  Dawson's 
assumption,  that  one  foot  of  coal  represents  fifty  genera- 
tions of  coal  plants;  and,  further,  make  the  moderate 
supposition  that  each  generation  of  coal  plants  took  ten 
years  to  come  to  maturity — then,  each  foot-thickness  of 
coal  represents  five  hundred  years.  The  superimposed 
beds  of  coal  in  one  coal-field  may  amount  to  a  thickness 
of  fifty  or  sixty  feet,  and  therefore  the  coal  alone,  in  that 
field,  represents  500  x  50  =  25,000  years.  But  the 
actual  coal  is  but  an  insignificant  portion  of  the  total 
deposit,  which,  as  has  been  seen,  may  amount  to  between 
two  and  three  miles  of  vertical  thickness.  Suppose  it 
be  12,000  feet — which  is  240  times  the  thickness  of  the 


v.]  ON  THE  FORM  ATI 

actual  coal — is  there  any  reason 
it  may  not  have  taken  240  times  as  long  to  form  ?  I 
know  of  none.  But,  in  this  case,  the  time  which  the 
coal-field  represents  would  be  25,000  x  240  =6,000,000 
years.  As  affording  a  definite  chronology,  of  course  such 
calculations  as  these  are  of  no  value  ;  but  they  have  much 
use  in  fixing  one's  attention  upon  a  possible  minimum. 
A  man  may  be  puzzled  if  he  is  asked  how  long  Rome 
took  a-building ;  but  he  is  proverbially  safe  if  he  affirms 
it  not  to  have  been  built  in  a  day ;  and  our  geological 
calculations  are  all,  at  present,  pretty  much  on  that 
footing. 

A  second  consideration  which  the  study  of  the  coal 
brings  prominently  before  the  mind  of  anyone  who  is 
familiar  with  palaeontology  is,  that  the  coal  Flora,  viewed 
in  relation  to  the  enormous  period  of  time  which  it  lasted, 
and  to  the  still  vaster  period  which  has  elapsed  since  it 
flourished,  underwent  little  change  while  it  endured,  and 
in  its  peculiar  characters,  differs  strangely  little  from  that 
which  at  present  exists. 

The  same  species  of  plants  are  to  be  met  with  through- 
out the  whole  thickness  of  a  coal-field,  and  the  youngest 
are  not  sensibly  different  from  the  oldest.  But  more  than 
this.  Notwithstanding  that  the  carboniferous  period  is 
separated  from  us  by  more  than  the  whole  time  repre- 
sented by  the  secondary  and  tertiary  formations,  the 
great  types  of  vegetation  were  as  distinct  then  as  now. 
The  structure  of  the  modern  club-moss  furnishes  a  com- 
plete explanation  of  the  fossil  remains  of  the  Lepido- 
dendra,  and  the  fronds  of  some  of  the  ancient  ferns  are 
hard  to  distinguish  from  existing  ones.  At  the  same 
time,  it  must  be  remembered,  that  there  is  nowhere  in 
the  world,  at  present,  any  forest  which  bears  more  than  a 
rough  analogy  with  a  coal-forest.  The  types  may  remain, 
but  the  details  of  their  form,  their  relative  proportions, 

6 


108  CEITIQUES  AND  ADDKESSE8.  |v. 

their  associates,  are  all  altered.  And  the  tree-fern  forest 
of  Tasmania,  or  New  Zealand,  gives  one  only  a  faint 
and  remote  image  of  the  vegetation  of  the  ancient 
world. 

Once  more,  an  in  variably- recurring  lesson  of  geological 
history,  at  whatever  point  its  study  is  taken  up  :  the 
lesson  of  the  almost  infinite  slowness  of  the  modification 
of  living  forms.  The  lines  of  the  pedigrees  of  living 
things  break  off  almost  before  they  begin  to  converge. 

Finally,  yet  another  curious  consideration.  Let  us 
suppose  that  one  of  the  stupid,  salamander-like  Labyrin- 
thodonts,  which  pottered,  with  much  belly  and  little  leg, 
like  FalstafT  in  his  old  age,  among  the  coal-forests,  could 
have  had  thinking  power  enough  in  his  small  brain  to 
reflect  upon  the  showers  of  spores  which  kept  on  falling 
through  years  and  centuries,  while  perhaps  not  one  in 
ten  million  fulfilled  its  apparent  purpose,  and  reproduced 
the  organism  which  gave  it  birth  :  surely  he  might  have 
been  excused  for  moralizing  upon  the  thoughtless  and 
wanton  extravagance  which  Nature  displayed  in  her 
operations. 

But  we  have  the  advantage  over  our  shovel-headed 
predecessor — or  possibly  ancestor — and  can  perceive  that 
a  Certain  vein  of  thrift  runs  through  this  apparent  prodi-' 
gality.  Nature  is  never  in  a  hurry,  and  seems  to  have 
had  always  before  her  eyes  the  adage,  "Keep  a  thing 
long  enough,  and  you  will  find  a  use  for  it."  She  has 
kept  her  beds  of  coal  many  millions  of  years  without 
being  able  to  find  much  use  for  them ;  she  has  sent  them 
down  beneath  the  sea,  and  the  sea-beasts  could  make 
nothing  of  them  ;  she  has  raised  them  up  into  dry  land, 
and  laid  the  black  veins  bare,  and  still,  for  ages  and  ages, 
there  was  no  living  thing  on  the  face  of  the  earth  that 
could  see  any  sort  of  value  in  them  ;  and  it  was  only  the 
other  day,  so  to  speak,  that  she  turned  a  new  creature 


v.]  ON  THE  .FORMATION  OF  COAL.  109 

out  of  her  workshop,  who  by  degrees  acquired  sufficient 
wits  to  make  a  fire,  and  then  to  discover  that  the  black 
rock  would  burn. 

I  suppose  that  nineteen  hundred  years  ago,  when 
Julius  Caesar  was  good  enough  to  deal  with  Britain  as 
we  have  dealt  with  New  Zealand,  the  primaeval  Briton, 
blue  with  cold  and  woad,  may  have  known  that  the 
strange  black  stone,  of  which  he  found  lumps  here  and 
there  in  his  wanderings,  would  burn,  and  so  help  to  warm 
his  body  and  cook  his  food.  Saxori,  Dane,  and  Norman 
swarmed  into  the  land.  The  English  people  grew  into  a 
powerful  nation,  and  Nature  still  waited  for  a  full  return 
of  the  capital  she  had  invested  in  the  ancient  club- 
mosses.  The  eighteenth  century  arrived,  and  with  .it 
James  Watt.  The  brain  of  that  man  was  the  spore  out 
of  which  was  developed  the  steam-engine,  and  all  the 
prodigious  trees  and  branches  of  modern  industry  which 
have" grown  out  of  this.  But  coal  is  as  much  an  essential 
condition  of  this  growth  and  development  as  carbonic 
acid  is  for  that  of  a  club-moss.,  \  Wanting  coal,  we 
could  not  have  smelted  the  iron  needed  to  make  our 
engines,  nor  have  worked  our  engines  when  we  had 
got  them.  But  take  away  the  engines,  and  the  great 
towns  of  Yorkshire  and  Lancashire  vanish  like  a  dream. 
Manufactures  give  place  to  agriculture  and  pasture,  and 
not  ten  men  can  live  where  now  ten  thousand  are  amply 
supported. 

Thus,  all  this  abundant  wealth  of  money  and  of  vivid 
life  is  Nature's  interest  upon  her  investment  in  club- 
mosses,  and  the  like,  so  long  ago.  But  what  becomes  of 
the  coal  which  is  burnt  in  yielding  this  interest  ?  Heat 
comes  out  of  it,  light  comes  out  of  it,  and  if  we  could 
gather  together  all  that  goes  up  the  chimney ;  and  all 
tli at  remains  in  the  grate  of  a  thoroughly-burnt  coal-fire, 
we  should  find  ourselves  in  possession  of  a  quantity  of 


110  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  (v. 

carbonic  acid,  water,  ammonia,  and  mineral  matters, 
exactly  equal  in  weight  to  the  coal.  But  these  are  the 
very  matters  with  which  Nature  supplied  the  club-mosses 
which  made  the  coal.  She  is  paid  back  principal  and 
interest  at  the  same  time ;  and  she  straightway  invests 
the  carbonic  acid,  the  water,  and  the  ammonia  in  new 
forms  of  life,  feeding  with  them  the  plants  that  now  live. 
Thrifty  Nature !  Surely  no  prodigal,  but  most  notable 
of  housekeepers ! 


VI. 
ON  CORAL  AND  CORAL  REEFS. 

THE  marine  productions  which  are  commonly  known  by 
the  names  of  "  Corals "  and  "  Corallines,"  were  thought 
by  the  ancients  to  be  sea-weeds,  which  had  the  singular 
property  of  becoming  hard  and  solid,  when  they  were 
fished  up  from  their  native  depths  and  came  into  con- 
tact with  the  air. 

"  Sic  et  curalium,  quo  primum  contigit  auras 
Tempore  durescit :  mollis  fuit  herba  sub  undis," 

says  Ovid  (Me tarn,  xv.) ;  and  it  was  not  until  the  seven- 
teenth century  that  Boccone  was  emboldened,  by  per- 
sonal experience  of  the  facts,  to  declare  that  the  holders 
of  this  belief  were  no  better  than  "  idiots,"  who  had  been 
misled  by  the  softness  of  the  outer  coat  of  the  living  red 
coral  to  imagine  that  it  was  soft  all  through. 

Messer  Boccone's  strong  epithet  is  probably  unde- 
served, as  the  notion  he  controverts,  in  all  likelihood, 
arose  merely  from  the  misinterpretation  of  the  strictly 
true  statement  which  any  coral  fisherman  would  make 
to  a  curious  inquirer;  namely,  that  the  outside  coat  of 
the  red  coral  is  quite  soft  when  it  is  taken  out  of  the  sea. 
At  any  rate,  he  did  good  service  by  eliminating  this 
much  error  from  the  current  notions  about  coral.  But 


112  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vi. 

the  belief  that  corals  are  plants  remained,  not  only  in  the 
popular,  but  in  the  scientific  mind ;  and  it  received  what 
appeared  to  be  a  striking  confirmation  from  the  researches 
of  Marsigli  in  1706.  For  this  naturalist,  having  the 
opportunity  of  observing  freshly-taken  red  coral,  saw 
that  its  branches  were  beset  with  what  looked  like  deli- 
cate and  beautiful  flowers,  each  having  eight  petals.  It 
was  true  that  these  "  flowers  "  could  protrude  and  retract 
themselves,  but  their  motions  were  hardly  more  exten- 
sive, or  more  varied,  than  those  of  the  leaves  of  the  sen- 
sitive plant ;  and  therefore  they  could  not  be  held  to 
militate  against  the  conclusion  so  strongly  suggested  by 
their  form  and  their  grouping  upon  the  branches  of  a 
tree-like  structure. 

Twenty  years  later,  a  pupil  of  Marsigli,  the  young 
Marseilles  physician,  Peyssonel,  conceived  the  desire  to 
study  these  singular  sea-plants,  and  was  sent  by  the 
French  Government  on  a  mission  to  the  Mediterranean 
for  that  purpose.  The  pupil  undertook  the  investigation 
full  of  confidence  in  the  ideas  of  his  master,  but  being 
able  to  see  and  think  for  himself,  he  soon  discovered  that 
those  ideas  by  no  means  altogether  corresponded  with 
reality.  In  an  essay  entitled  "  Traite  du  Corail,"  which 
was  communicated  to  the  French  Academy  of  Science, 
but  which  has  never  been  published,  Peyssonel  writes  : — 

"  Je  fis  fleurir  le  corail  dans  des  vases  pleins  d'eau  de  mer,  et  j'obser- 
vai  que  ce  que  nous  croyons  £tre  la  fleur  de  cette  prStendue  planta 
n'e"tait  au  vrai,  qu'un  insecte  semblable  a  une  petite  Ortie  ou  Poulpe. 
J'avais  le  plaisir  de  voir  remuer  les  pattes,  ou  pieds,  de  cette  Ortie,  et 
ayant  mis  le  vase  plein  d'eau  ou  le  corail  e"tait  a  une  douce  chaleur 
aupres  du  feu,  tous  les  petites  insectes  s'epanouirent.  .  .  .  L'Ortie 
sortie  etend  les  pieds,  et  forme  ce  que  M.  de  Marsigli  et  moi  avions 
pris  pour  les  petales  de  la  fleur.  Le  calice  de  cette  prgtendue  fleur  esb 
le  corps  meme  de  I'animal  avarice*  et  sorti  hors  de  la  cellule." 1 

i  This  extract  from  Peysonnel's  manuscript  is  given  by  M.  Lacaze  Duthiers  in 
his  valuable  "  Histoire  Naturelle  du  Corail "  (1866). 


vi.J  ON  CORAL  AND  CORAL  REEFS.  113 

The  comparison  of  the  flowers  of  the  coral  to  a  "  petite 
ortie"  or  "little  nettle"  is  perfectly  just,  but  needs  ex- 
planation. "  Ortie  de  mer,"  or  "  sea-nettle,"  is,  in  fact, 
the  French  appellation  for  our  "  sea-anemone,"  a  creature 
with  which  everybody,  since  the  great  aquarium  mania, 
must  have  become  familiar,  even  to  the  limits  of  bore- 
dom. In  1710,  the  great  naturalist,  Keaumur,  had 
written  a  memoir  for  the  express  purpose  of  demon- 
strating that  these  "  orties  "  are  animals  ;  and  with  this 
important  paper  Peyssonel  must  necessarily  have  been 
familiar.  Therefore,  when  he  declared  the  "  flowers  "  of 
the  red  coral  to  be  little  "  orties,"  it  was  the  same  thing 
as  saying  that  they  were  animals  of  the  same  general 
nature  as  sea-anemones.  But  to  Peyssonel's  contempo- 
raries this  was  an  extremely  startling  announcement. 
It  was  hard  to  imagine  the  existence  of  such  a  thing  as 
an  association  of  animals  into  a  structure  with  stem  and 
branches  altogether  like  a  plant,  and  fixed  to  the  soil  as 
a  plant  is  fixed ;  and  the  naturalists  of  that  day  preferred 
not  to  imagine  it.  Even  E^aumur  could  not  bring  him- 
self to  accept  the  notion,  and  France  being  blessed  with 
Academicians,  whose  great  function  (as  the  late  Bishop 
Wilson  and  an  eminent  modern  writer  have  so  well 
shown)  is  to  cause  sweetness  and  light  to  prevail,  and  to 
prevent  such  unmannerly  fellows  as  Peyssonel  from  blurt- 
ing out  unedifying  truths,  they  suppressed  him ;  and,  as 
aforesaid,  his  great  work  remained  in  manuscript,  and 
may  at  this  day  be  consulted  by  the  curious  in  that  state, 
in  the  "  Bibliotheque  du  Museum  d'Histoire  Naturelle." 
Peyssonel,  who  evidently  was  a  person  of  savage  and  un- 
tameable  disposition,  so  far  from  appreciating  the  kind- 
ness of  the  Academicians  in  giving  him  time  to  reflect 
upon  the  unreasonableness,  not  to  say  rudeness,  of  making 
public  statements  in  opposition  to  the  views  of  some  of 
the  most  distinguished  of  their  body,  seems  bitterly  to 


114  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vi. 

have  resented  the  treatment  he  met  with.  For  he  sent 
all  further  communications  to  the  Royal  Society  of 
London,  which  never  had,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  never 
will  have,  anything  of  an  academic  constitution ;  and 
finally  took  himself  off  to  Guadaloupe,  and  became  lost 
to  science  altogether. 

Fifteen  or  sixteen  years  after  the  date  of  Peyssonel's 
suppressed  paper,  the  Abbe  Trembley  published  his  won- 
derful researches  upon  the  fresh- water  Hydra.  Bernard  de 
Jussieu  and  Guettard  followed  them  up  by  like  inquiries 
upon  the  marine  sea-anemones  and  corallines  ;  Reaumur, 
convinced  against  his  will  of  the  entire  justice  of  Peys- 
sonel's views,  adopted  them,  and  made  him  a  half-and- 
half  apology  in  the  preface  to  the  next  published  volume 
of  the  "  Memoires  pour  servir  a  1'Histoire  des  Insectes  ; " 
and,  from  this  time  forth,  Peyssonel's  doctrine  that  corals 
are  the  work  of  animal  organisms  has  been  part  of  the 
body  of  established  scientific  truth. 

Peyssonel,  in  the  extract  from  his  memoir  already 
cited,  compares  the  flower-like  animal  of  the  coral  to  a 
"poulpe,"  which  is  the  French  form  of  the  name  "poly- 
pus,"— <c  the  many-footed," — which  the  ancient  naturalists 
gave  to  the  soft-bodied  cuttle-fishes,  which,  like  the  coral 
animal,  have  eight  arms,  or  tentacles,  disposed  around 
a  central  mouth.  Reaumur,  admitting  the  analogy  in- 
dicated by  Peyssonel,  gave  the  name  of  polypes,  not  only 
to  the  sea-anemone,  the  coral  animal,  and  the  fresh-water 
Hydra,  but  to  what  are  now  known  as  the  Polyzoa,  and 
he  termed  the  skeleton  which  they  fabricate  a  "poly- 
pier"  or  "  polypidom." 

The  progress  of  discovery,  since  Reaumur's  time,  has 
made  us  very  completely  acquainted  with  the  structure 
and  habits  of  all  these  polypes.  We  know  that,  among 
the  sea-anemones  and  coral-forming  animals,  each  polype 
has  a  mouth  leading  to  a  stomach,  which  is  open  at  its 


vi.]  ON  CORAL  AND  CORAL  11EEF&  115 

inner  end,  and  thus  communicates  freely  with  the  general 
cavity  of  the  body ;  that  the  tentacles  placed  round  the 
mouth  are  hollow,  and  that  they  perform  the  part  of 
arms  in  seizing  and  capturing  prey.  It  is  known  that 
many  of  these  creatures  are  capable  of  being  multiplied 
by  artificial  division,  the  divided  halves  growing,  after  a 
time,  into  complete  and  separate  animals ;  and  that  many 
are  able  to  perform  a  very  similar  process  naturally,  in 
such  a  manner  that  one  polype  may,  by  repeated  incom- 
plete divisions,  give  rise  to  a  sort  of  sheet,  or  turf,  formed 
by  innumerable  connected,  and  yet  independent,  descen- 
dants. Or,  what  is  still  more  common,  a  polype  may 
throw  out  buds,  which  are  converted  into  polypes,  or 
branches  bearing  polypes,  until  a  tree-like  mass,  some- 
times of  very  considerable  size,  is  formed. 

This  is  what  happens  in  the  case  of  the  red  coral  of 
commerce.  A  minute  polype,  fixed  to  the  rocky  bottom 
of  the  deep  sea,  grows  up  into  a  branched  trunk.  The 
end  of  every  branch  and  twig  is  terminated  by  a  polype  ; 
and  all  the  polypes  are  connected  together  by  a  fleshy 
substance,  traversed  by  innumerable  canals  which  place 
each  polype  in  communication  with  every  other,  and 
carry  nourishment  to  the  substance  of  the  supporting 
stem.  It  is  a  sort  of  natural  co-operative  store,  every 
polype  helping  the  whole,  at  the  same  time  as  it  helps 
itself.  The  interior  of  the  stem,  like  that  of  the  branches, 
is  solidified  by  the  deposition  of  carbonate  of  lime  in  its 
tissue,  somewhat  in  the  same  fashion  as  our  own  bones 
are  formed  of  animal  matter  impregnated  with  lime  salts  ; 
and  it  is  this  dense  skeleton  (usually  turned  deep  red  by 
a  peculiar  colouring  matter)  cleared  of  the  soft  animal 
investment,  as  the  heart-wood  of  a  tree  might  be  stripped 
of  its  bark,  which  is  the  red  coral. 

In  the  case  of  the  red  coral,  the  hard  skeleton  belongs 
to  the  interior  of  the  stem  and  branches  only ;  but.  in 


116  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [tt. 

the  commoner  white  corals,  each  polype  has  a  complete 
skeleton  of  its  own.  These  polypes  ate  sometimes  soli- 
tary, in  which  case  the  whole  skeleton  is  represented  by 
a  single  cup,  with  partitions  radiating  from  its  centre 
to  its  circumference.  When  the  polypes  formed  by  bud- 
ding or  division  remain  associated,  the  polypidom  is  some- 
times made  up  of  nothing  but  an  aggregation  of  these 
cups,  while  at  other  times  the  cups  are  at  once  separated 
and  held  together,  by  an  intermediate  substance,  which 
represents  the  branches  of  the  red  coral.  The  red  coral 
polype  again  is  a  comparatively  rare  animal,  inhabiting 
a  limited  area,  the  skeleton  of  which  has  but  a  very 
insignificant  mass  ;  while  the  white  corals  are  very  com- 
mon, occur  in  almost  all  seas,  and  form  skeletons  which 
are  sometimes  extremely  massive. 

With  a  very  few  exceptions,  both  the  red  and  the 
white  coral  polypes  are,  in  their  adult  state,  firmly  ad- 
herent to  the  sea-bottom  ;  nor  do  their  buds  naturally 
become  detached  and  locomotive.  But,  in  addition  to 
budding  and  division,  these  creatures  possess  the  more 
ordinary  methods  of  multiplication ;  and,  at  particular 
seasons,  they  give  rise  to  numerous  eggs  of  minute  size. 
Within  these  eggs  the  young  are  formed,  and  they  leave 
the  egg  in  a  condition  which  has  no  sort  of  resemblance 
to  the  perfect  animal.  It  is,  in  fact,  a  minute  oval  body, 
many  hundred  times  smaller  than  the  full-grown  crea- 
ture, and  it  swims  about  with  great  activity  by  the  help 
of  multitudes  of  little  hair-like  filaments,  called  cilia,  with 
which  its  body  is  covered.  These  cilia  all  lash  the  water 
in  one  direction,  and  so  drive  the  little  body  along  as 
if  it  were  propelled  by  thousands  of  extremely  mioute 
paddles.  After  enjoying  its  freedom  for  a  longer  or 
shorter  time,  and  being  carried  either  by  the  force  of  its 
own  cilia,  or  by  currents  which  bear  it  along,  the  embryo 
coral  settles  down  to  the  bottom,  loses  its  cilia,  and 


vi.]  CW  CORAL  AND  CORAL  REEFS.  117 

becomes  fixed  to  the  rock,  gradually  assuming  the  polype 
form  and  growing  up  to  the  size  of  its  parent.  As  the 
infant  polypes  of  the  coral  may  retain  this  free  and 
active  condition  for  many  hours,  or  even  days,  and  as  a 
tidal  or  other  current  in  the  sea  may  easily  flow  at  the 
speed  of  two  or  even  more  miles  in  an  hour,  it  is  clear 
that  the  embryo  must  often  be  transported  to  very  con- 
siderable distances  from  the  parent.  And  it  is  easily 
understood  how  a  single  polype,  which  may  give  rise 
to  hundreds,  or  perhaps  thousands,  of  embryos,  may,  by 
this  process  of  partly  active  and  partly  passive  migra- 
tion, cover  an  immense  surface  with  its  offspring.  The 
masses  of  coral  which  may  be  formed  by  the  assemblages 
of  polypes  which  spring  by  budding,  or  by  dividing, 
from  a  single  polype,  occasionally  attain  very  con- 
siderable dimensions.  Such  skeletons  are  sometimes  great 
plates,  many  feet  long  and  several  feet  in  thickness ;  or 
they  may  form  huge  half  globes,  like  the  brainstone 
corals,  or  may  reach  the  magnitude  of  stout  shrubs,  or 
even  small  trees.  There  is  reason  to  believe  that  such 
masses  as  these  take  a  long  time  to  form,  and  hence  that 
the  age  a  polype  tree,  or  polype  turf,  may  attain,  may  be 
considerable.  But,  sooner  or  later,  the  coral  polypes,  like 
all  other  things,  die ;  the  soft  flesh  decays,  while  the 
skeleton  is  left  as  a  stony  mass  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea, 
where  it  retains  its  integrity  for  a  longer  or  a  shorter 
time,  according  as  its  position  affords  it  more  or  less  pro- 
tection from  the  wear  and  tear  of  the  waves. 

The  polypes  which  give  rise  to  the  white  coral  are 
found,  as  has  been  said,  in  the  seas  of  all  parts  of  the 
world ;  but  in  the  temperate  and  cold  oceans  they  are 
scattered  and  comparatively  small  in  size,  so  that  the 
skeletons  of  those  which  die  do  not  accumulate  in  any 
considerable  quantity.  But  it  is  otherwise  in  the  greater 
part  of  the  ocean  which  lies  in  the  warmer  parts  of  the 


118  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [YI. 

world,  comprised  within  a  distance  of  about  1,800  miles 
on  eacli  side  of  the  equator.  Within  the  zone  thus 
bounded,  by  for  the  greater  part  of  the  ocean  is  inhabited 
by  coral  polypes,  which  not  only  form  very  strong  and 
large  skeletons,  but  associate  together  into  great  masses, 
like  the  thickets  and  the  meadow  turf,  or,  better  still,  the 
accumulations  of  peat,  to  which  plants  give  rise  on  the 
dry  land.  These  masses  of  stony  matter,  heaped  up 
beneath  the  waters  of  the  ocean,  become  as  dangerous 
to  mariners  as  so  much  ordinary  rock,  and  to  these, 
as  to  common  rock  ridges,  the  seaman  gives  the  name 
of  "reefs." 

Such  coral  reefs  cover  many  thousand  square  miles  in 
the  Pacific  and  in  the  Indian  Oceans.  There  is  one  reef, 
or  rather  great  series  of  reefs,  called  the  Barrier  Eeef, 
which  stretches,  almost  continuously,  for  more  than  1,100 
miles  off  the  east  coast  of  Australia.  Multitudes  of  the 
island  in  the  Pacific  are  either  reefs  themselves,  or  are 
surrounded  by  reefs.  The  Red  Sea  is  in  many  parts 
almost  a  maze  of  such  reefs  ;  and  they  abound  no  less  in 
the  West  Indies,  along  the  coast  of  Florida,  and  even  as 
far  north  as  the  Bahama  Islands.  But  it  is  a  very 
remarkable  circumstance  that,  within  the  area  of  what 
we  may  call  the  "  coral  zone,"  there  are  no  coral  reefs 
upon  the  west  coast  of  America,  nor  upon  the  west  coast 
of  Africa ;  and  it  is  a  general  fact  that  the  reefs  are 
interrupted,  or  absent,  opposite  the  mouths  of  great 
rivers.  The  causes  of  this  apparent  caprice  in  the  distri- 
bution of  coral  reefs  are  not  far  to  seek.  The  polypes 
which  fabricate  them  require  for  their  vigorous  growth  a 
temperature  which  must  not  fall  below  68°  Fahrenheit 
all  the  year  round,  and  this  temperature  is  only  to  be 
found  within  the  distance  on  each  side  of  the  equator 
which  has  been  mentioned,  or  thereabouts.  But  even 
within  the  coral  zone  this  degree -of  warmth  is  not  every- 


vi.]  ON  CORAL  AND  CORAL  REEFS.  119 

where  to  be  had.  On  the  west  coast  of  America,  and  on 
the  corresponding  coast  of  Africa,  currents  of  cold  water 
from  the  icy  regions  which  surround  the  South  Pole  set 
northward,  and  it  appears  to  be  due  to  their  cooling 
influence  that  the  sea  in  these  regions  is  free  from  the 
reef  builders.  Again,  the  coral  polypes  cannot  live  in 
water  which  is  rendered  brackish  by  floods  from  the  land, 
or  which  is  perturbed  by  mud  from  the  same  source,  and 
hence  it  is  that  they  cease  to  exist  opposite  the  mouths 
of  rivers,  which  damage  them  in  both  these  ways. 

Such  is  the  general  distribution  of  the  reef-building 
corals,  but  there  are  some  very  interesting  and  singular 
circumstances  to  be  observed  in  the  conformation  of  the 
reefs,  when  we  consider  them  individually.  The  reefs, 
in  fact,  are  of  three  different  kinds  ;  some  of  them  stretch 
out  from  the  shore,  almost  like  a  prolongation  of  the 
beach,  covered  only  by  shallow  water,  and  in  the  case  of 
an  island,  surrounding  it  like  a  fringe  of  no  considerable 
breadth.  These  are  termed  "  fringing  reefs."  Others 
are  separated  by  a  channel  which  may  attain  a  width  of 
many  miles,  and  a  depth  of  twenty  or  thirty  fathoms  or 
more,  from  the  nearest  land  ;  and  when  this  land  is  an 
island,  the  reef  surrounds  it  like  a  low  wall,  and  the  sea 
between  the  reef  and  the  land  is,  as  it  were,  a  moat 
inside  this  wall.  Such  reefs  as  these  are  called  <(  en- 
circling "  when  they  surround  an  island ;  and  "  barrier  " 
reefs,  when  they  stretch  parallel  with  the  coast  of  a  con- 
tinent. In  both  these  cases  there  is  ordinary  dry  land 
inside  the  reef,  and  separated  from  it  only  by  a  narrower 
or  a  wider,  a  shallower  or  a  deeper,  space  of  sea,  which 
is  called  a  "  lagoon,"  or  "  inner  passage."  But  there  is  a 
third  kind  of  reef,  of  very  common  occurrence  in  the 
Pacific  and  Indian  Oceans,  which  goes  by  the  name  of 
an  "  Atoll."  This  is,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  an 
encircling  reef,  without  anything  to  encircle;  or,  in 


120  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vi. 

other  words,  without  an  island  in  the  middle  of  its 
lagoon.  The  atoll  has  exactly  the  appearance  of  a  vast, 
irregularly  oval,  or  circular,  breakwater,  enclosing  smooth 
water  in  its  midst.  The  depth  of  the  water  in  the  lagoon 
rarely  exceeds  twenty  or  thirty  fathoms,  but,  outside 
the  reef,  it  deepens  with  great  rapidity  to  200  or  300 
fathoms.  The  depth  immediately  outside  the  barrier,  or 
encircling,  reefs,  may  also  be  very  considerable ;  but,  at 
the  outer  edge  of  a  fringing  reef,  it  does  not  amount 
usually  to  more  than  twenty  or  twenty-five  fathoms  ;  in 
other  words,  from  120  to  150  feet. 

Thus,  if  the  water  of  the  ocean  could  be  suddenly 
drained  away,  we  should  see  the  atolls  rising  from  the 
sea-bed  like  vast  truncated  cones,  and  resembling  so 
many  volcanic  craters,  except  that  their  sides  would  be 
steeper  than  those  of  an  ordinary  volcano.  In  the  case 
of  the  encircling  reefs,  the  cone,  with  the  enclosed  island, 
would  look  like  Vesuvius  with  Monte  Nuovo  within  the 
old  crater  of  Somma ;  while,  finally,  the  island  with  a 
fringing  reef  would  have  the  appearance  of  an  ordinary 
hill,  or  mountain,  girded  by  a  vast  parapet,  within  which 
would  lie  a  shallow  moat.  And  -the  dry  bed  of  the 
Pacific  might  afford  grounds  for  an  inhabitant  of  the 
moon  to  speculate  upon  the  extraordinary  subterranean 
activity  to  which  these  vast  and  numerous  "craters" 
bore  witness! 

When  the  structure  of  a  fringing  reef  is  investigated, 
the  bottom  of  the  lagoon  is  found  to  be  covered  with  fine 
whitish  mud,  which  results  from  the  breaking  up  of  the 
dead  corals.  Upon  this  muddy  floor  there  lie,  here  and 
there,  growing  corals,  or  occasionally  great  blocks  of  dead 
coral,  which  have  been  torn  by  storms  from  the  outer 
edge  of  the  reef,  and  washed  into  the  lagoon.  Shell-fish 
and  worms  of  various  kinds  abound ;  and  fish,  some  of 
which  prey  upon  the  coral,  sport  in  the  deeper  pools. 


vi.]  ON  CORAL  AND  CORAL  REEFS.  121 

But  the  corals  which  are  to  be  seen  growing  in  the 
shallow  waters  of  the  lagoon  are  of  a  different  kind  from 
those  which  abound  on  the  outer  edge  of  the  reef,  and  of 
which  the  reef  is  built  up.  Close  to  the  seaward  edge  of 
the  reef,  Over  which,  even  in  calm  weather,  a  surf  almost 
always  breaks,  the  coral  rock  is  encrusted  with  a  thick 
coat  of  a  singular  vegetable  organism,  which  contains  a 
great  deal  of  lime — the  so-called  Nullipora.  Beyond 
this,  in  the  part  of  the  edge  of  the  reef  which  is  always 
covered  by  the  breaking  waves,  the  living,  true,  reef- 
polypes  make  their  appearance ;  and,  in  different  forms, 
coat  the  steep  seaward  face  of  the  reef  to  a  depth  of  100 
or  even  150  feet.  Beyond  this  depth  the  sounding-lead 
rests,  not  upon  the  wall-like  face  of  the  reef,  but  on  the 
ordinary  shelving  sea-bottom.  And  the  distance  to 
which  a  fringing  reef  extends  from  the  land  corresponds 
with  that  at  which  the  sea  has  a  depth  of  twenty  or  five- 
and-twenty  fathoms. 

If,  as  we  have  supposed,  the  sea  could  be  suddenly 
withdrawn  from  around  an  island  provided  with  a 
fringing  reef,  such  as  the  Mauritius,  the  reef  would 
present  the  aspect  of  a  terrace,  its  seaward  face,  100  feet 
or  more  high,  blooming  with  the  animal  flowers  of  the 
coral,  while  its  surface  would  be  hollowed  out  into  a 
shallow  and  irregular  moat-like  excavation. 

The  coral  mud,  which  occupies  the  bottom  of  the 
lagoon,  and  with  which  all  the  interstices  of  the  coral 
skeletons  which  accumulate  to  form  the  reef  are  filled  up, 
does  not  proceed  from  the  washing  action  of  the  waves 
alone;  innumerable  fishes,  and  other  creatures  which 
prey  upon  the  coral,  add  a  very  important  contribution 
of  finely-triturated  calcareous  matter ;  and  the  corals  and 
mud  becoming  incorporated  together,  gradually  harden 
and  give  rise  to  a  sort  of  limestone  rock,  which  may  vary 
a  good  deal  in  texture.  Sometimes  it  remains  friable 


122  CRITIQUES  AND  ADQWSSm.  [vi. 

and  chalky,  but,  more  often,  the  infiltration  of  water, 
charged  with  carbonic  acid,  dissolves  some  of  the  cal- 
careous matter,  and  deposits  it  elsewhere  in  the  inter- 
stices of  the  nascent  rock,  thus  glueing  and  cementing 
the  particles  together  into  a  hard  mass ;  or  it  may  even 
dissolve  the  carbonate  of  lime  more  extensively,  and 
re-deposit  it  in  a  crystalline  form.  On  the  beach  of  the 
lagoon,  where  the  coral  sand  is  washed  into  layers  by 
the  action  of  the  waves,  its  grains  become  thus  fused  to- 
gether into  strata  of  a  limestone,  so  hard  that  they  ring 
when  struck  with  a  hammer,  and  inclined  at  a  gentle 
angle,  corresponding  with  that  of  the  surface  of  the  beach. 
The  hard  parts  of  the  many  animals  which  live  upon 
the  reef  become  imbedded  in  this  coral  limestone,  so  that 
a  block  may  be  full  of  shells  of  bivalves  and  univalves, 
or  of  sea-urchins ;  and  even  sometimes  encloses  the 
eggs  of  turtles  in  a  state  of  petrifaction.  The  active  and 
vigorous  growth  of  the  reef  goes  on  only  at  the  seaward 
margins,  where  the  polypes  are  exposed  to  the  wash  of 
the  surf,  and  are  thereby  provided  with  an  abundant 
supply  of  air  and  of  food.  The  interior  portion  of  the 
reef  may  be  regarded  as  almost  wholly  an  accumulation 
of  dead  skeletons.  Where  a  river  comes  down  from  the 
land  there  is  a  break  in  the  reef,  for  the  reasons  which 
have  been  already  mentioned. 

The  origin  and  mode  of  formation  of  a  fringing  reef,  such 
as  that  just  described,  are  plain  enough.  The  embryos  of 
the  coral  polypes  have  fixed  themselves  upon  the  sub- 
merged shore  of  the  island,  as  far  out  as  they  could  live, 
namely,  to  a  depth  of  twenty  or  twenty -five  fathoms.  One 
generation  has  succeeded  another,  building  itself  up  upon 
the  dead  skeletons  of  its  predecessor.  The  mass  has  been 
consolidated  by  the  infiltration  of  coral  mud,  and  har- 
dened by  partial  solution  and  redeposition,  until  a  great 
rampart  of  coral  rock  100  or  150  feet  high  on  its  sea- 


vi.  j  ON  COHAL  AND  COEAL  MEEFS.  123 

ward  face  has  been  formed  all  round  the  island,  with 
only  such  gaps  as  result  from  the  outflow  of  rivers,  in 
the  place  of  sally-ports. 

The  structure  of  the  rocky  accumulation  in  the  en- 
circling reefs  and  in  the  atolls  is  essentially  the  same  as 
in  the  fringing  reef.  But,  in  addition  to  the  differences 
of  depth  inside  and  out,  they  present  some  other  pecu- 
liarities. These  reefs,  and  especially  the  atolls,  are 
usually  interrupted  at  one  part  of  their  circumference, 
and  this  part  is  always  situated  on  the  leeward  side 
of  the  reef,  or  that  which  is  the  more  sheltered  side. 
Now,  as  all  these  reefs  are  situated  within  the  region  in 
which  the  trade-winds  prevail,  it  follows  that,  on  the 
north  side  of  the  equator,  where  the  trade- wind  is  a 
north-easterly  wind,  the  opening  of  the  reef  is  on  the 
south-west  side:  while  in  the  southern  hemisphere,  where 
the  trade- winds  blow  from  the  south-east,  the  opening 
lies  to  the  north-west.  The  curious  practical  result 
follows  from  this  structure,  that  the  lagoons  of  these 
reefs  really  form  admirable  harbours,  if  a  ship  can  only 
get  inside  them.  But  the  main  difference  between  the 
encircling  reefs  and  the  atolls,  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  fringing  reefs  on  the  other,  lies  in  the  fact  of  the 
much  greater  depth  of  water  on  the  seaward  faces  of  the 
former.  As  a  consequence  of  this  fact,  the  whole  of 
this  face  is  not,  as  it  is  in  the  case  of  the  fringing  reef, 
covered  with  living  coral  polypes.  For,  as  we  have 
seen,  these  polypes  cannot  live  at  a  greater  depth  than 
about  twenty-five  fathoms  ;  and  actual  observation  has 
shown  that  while,  down  to  this  depth,  the  sounding-lead 
will  bring  up  branches  of  live  coral  from  the  outer 
wall  of  such  a  reef,  at  a  greater  depth  it  fetches  to 
the  surface  nothing  but  dead  coral  and  coral  sand. 
We  must,  therefore,  picture  to  ourselves  an  atoll,  or  an 
encircling  reef,  as  fringed  for  100  feet,  or  more,  from  its 


124  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vi. 

summit,  with  coral  polypes  busily  engaged  in  fabricating 
coral ;  while,  below  this  comparatively  narrow  belt,  its 
surface  is  a  bare  and  smooth  expanse  of  coral  sand, 
supported  upon  and  within  a  core  of  coral  limestone. 
Thus,  if  the  bed  of  the  Pacific  were  suddenly  laid  bare, 
as  was  just  now  supposed,  the  appearance  of  the  reef- 
mountains  would  be  exactly  the  reverse  of  that  presented 
by  many  high  mountains  on  land.  For  these  are  white 
with  snow  at  the  top,  while  their  bases  are  clothed  with 
an  abundant  and  gaudily-coloured  vegetation.  But  the 
coral  cones  would  look  grey  and  barren  below,  while 
their  summits  would  be  gay  with  a  richly-coloured 
parterre  of  flower-like  coral  polypes. 

The  practical  difficulties  of  sounding  upon,  and  of 
bringing  up  portions  of,  the  seaward  face  of  an  atoll  or 
of  an  encircling  reef,  are  so  great,  in  consequence  of  the 
constant  and  dangerous  swell  which  sets  towards  it,  that 
no  exact  information  concerning  the  depth  to  which  the 
reefs  are  composed  of  coral  has  yet  been  obtained.  There 
is  no  reason  to  doubt,  however,  that  the  reef-cone  has  the 
same  structure  from  its  summit  to  its  base,  and  that  its 
sea-wall  is  throughout  mainly  composed  of  dead  coral. 

And  now  arises  a  serious  difficulty.  If  the  coral 
polypes  cannot  live  at  a  greater  depth  than  100  or  150 
feet,  how  can  they  have  built  up  the  base  of  the  reef- 
cone,  which  may  be  2,000  feet,  or  more,  below  the 
surface  of  the  sea  ? 

In  order  to  get  over  this  objection,  it  was  at  one  time 
supposed  that  the  reef-building  polypes  had  settled  upon 
the  summits  of  a  chain  of  submarine  mountains.  But 
what  is  there  in  physical  geography  to  justify  the 
assumption  of  the  existence  of  a  chain  of  mountains 
stretching  for  1,000  miles  or  more,  and  so  nearly  of  the 
same  height,  that  none  should  rise  above  the  level  of  the 
sea,  nor  fall  150  feet  below  that  level  ? 


vi.]  ON  CORAL  AND  CORAL  REEFS.  125 

How  again,  on  this  hypothesis,  are  atolls  to  be 
accounted  for,  unless,  as  some  have  done,  we  take  refuge 
in  the  wild  supposition  that  every  atoll  corresponds  with 
the  crater  of  a  submarine  volcano  ?  And  what  explana- 
tion does  it  afford  of  the  fact  that,  in  some  parts  of  the 
ocean,  only  atolls  and  encircling  reefs  occur,  while  others 
present  none  but  fringing  reefs  ? 

These  and  other  puzzling  facts  remained  insoluble 
until  the  publication,  in  the  year  1840,  of  Mr.  Darwin's 
famous  work  on  coral  reefs  ;  in  which  a  key  was  given 
to  all  the  difficult  yroblems  connected  with  the  subject, 
and  every  difficulty  was  shown  to  be  capable  of  solution 
by  deductive  reasoning  from  a  happy  combination  of 
certain  well-established  geological  and  biological  truths. 
Mr.  Darwin,  in  fact,  showed,  that  so  long  as  the  level  of 
the  sea  remains  unaltered  in  any  area  in  which  coral 
reefs  are  being  formed,  or  if  the  level  of  the  sea  relatively 
to  that  of  the  land  is  falling,  the  only  reefs  which  -can 
be  formed  are  fringing  reefs.  While  if,  on  the  contrary, 
the  level  of  the  sea  is  rising  relatively  to  that  of  the 
land,  at  a  rate  not  faster  than  that  at  which  the  upward 
growth  of  the  coral  can  keep  pace  with  it,  the  reef  will 
gradually  pass  from  the  condition  of  a  fringing,  into  that 
of  an  encircling  or  barrier  reef.  And,  finally,  that  if  the 
relative  level  of  the  sea  rise  so  much  that  the  encircled 
land  is  completely  submerged,  the  reef  must  necessarily 
pass  into  the  condition  of  an  atoll. 

For,  suppose  the  relative  level  of  the  sea  to  remain 
stationary,  after  a  fringing  reef  has  reached  that  distance 
from  the  land  at  which  the  depth  of  water  amounts  to 
150  feet.  Then  the  reef  cannot  extend  seaward  by  the 
migration  of  coral  germs,  because  these  coral  germs 
would  find  the  bottom  of  the  sea  to  be  too  deep  for 
them  to  live  in.  And  the  only  manner  in  which  the 
reef  could  extend  outwards,  would  be  by  the  gradual 


126  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vi 

accumulation,  at  the  foot  of  its  seaward  face,  of  a  talus 
of  coral  fragments  torn  off  by  the  violence  of  the  waves, 
which  talus  might,  in  course  of  time,  become  high 
enough  to  bring  its  upper  surface  within  the  limits  of 
coral  growth,  and  in  that  manner  provide  a  sort  of 
factitious  sea-bottom  upon  which  the  coral  embryos 
might  perch.  If,  on  the  other  band,  the  level  of  the 
sea  were  slowly  and  gradually  lowered,  it  is  clear  that 
the  parts  of  its  bottom  originally  beyond  the  limit  of 
coral  growth,  would  gradually  be  brought  within  the 
required  distance  of  the  surface,  and  thus  the  reef  might 
be  indefinitely  extended.  But  this  process  would  give 
rise  neither  to  an  encircling  reef  nor  to  an  atoll,  but  to  a 
broad  belt  of  upheaved  coral  rock,  increasing  the  dimen- 
sions of  the  dry  land,  and  continuous  seawards  with  the 
fresh  fringing  reef. 

Suppose,  however,  that  the  sea-level  rose  instead  of 
falling,  at  the  same  slow  and  gradual  rate  at  which  we 
know  it  to  be  rising  in  some  parts  of  the  world — not 
more,  in  fact,  than  a  few  inches,  or,  at  most,  a  foot  or 
two,  in  a  hundred  years,  Then,  while  the  reef  would  be 
unable  to  extend  itself  seaward,  the  sea-bottom  outside 
it  being  gradually  more  and  more  removed  from  the 
depth  at  which  the  life  of  the  coral  polypes  is  possible, 
it  would  be  able  to  grow  upwards  as  fast  as  the  sea  rose. 
But  the  growth  would  take  place  almost  exclusively 
around  the  circumference  of  the  reef,  this  being  the  only 
region  in  which  the  coral  polypes  would  find  the  con- 
ditions favourable  for  their  existence.  The  bottom  of 
the  lagoon  would  be  raised,  in  the  main,  only  by  the 
coral  debris  and  coral  mud,  formed  in  the  manner 
already  described ;  consequently,  the  margins  of  the  reef 
would  rise  faster  than  the  bottom,  or,  in  other  words, 
the  lagoon  would  constantly  become  deeper.  And,  at 
the  same  time,  it  would  gradually  increase  in  breadth  ; 


vi.]  ON  CORAL  AND  CORAL  REEFS.  127 

as  the  rising  sea,  covering  more  and  more  of  the  land, 
would  occupy  a  wider  space  between  the  edge  of  the 
reef  and  what  remained  of  the  land.  Thus  the  rising 
sea  would  eventually  convert  a  large  island  with  a 
fringing  reef,  into  a  small  island  surrounded  by  an  en- 
circling reef.  And  it  will  be  obvious  that  when  the 
rising  of  the  sea  has  gone  so  far  as  completely  to  cover 
the  highest  points  of  the  island,  the  reef  will  have 
passed  into -the  condition  of  an  atoll. 

But  how  is  it  possible  that  the  relative  level  of  the 
land  and  sea  should  be  altered  to  this  extent  ?  Clearly, 
only  in  one  of  two  ways :  either  the  sea  must  have  risen 
over  those  areas  which  are  now  covered  by  atolls  and 
encircling  reefs ;  or,  the  land  upon  which  the  sea  rests 
must  have  been  depressed  to  a  corresponding  extent. 

If  the  sea  has  risen,  its  rise  must  have  taken  place 
over  the  whole  world  simultaneously,  and  it  must  have 
risen  to  the  same  height  over  all  parts  of  the  coral  zone. 
Grounds  have  been  shown  for  the  belief  that  the  general 
level  of  the  sea  may  have  been  different  at  different 
times  ;  it  has  been  suggested,  for  example,  that  the  ac- 
cumulation of  ice  about  the  poles  during  one  of  the  cold 
periods  of  the  earth's  history,  necessarily  implies  a  dimi- 
nution in  the  volume  of  the  sea  proportioned  to  the 
amount  of  its  water  thus  permanently  locked  up  in  the 
Arctic  and  Antarctic  ice-cellars  ;  while,  in  the  warm 
periods,  the  greater  or  less  disappearance  of  the  polar 
ice-cap  implies  a  corresponding  addition  of  water  to  the 
ocean.  And  no  dcubt  this  reasoning  must  be  admitted 
to  be  sound  in  principle  ;  though  it  is  very  hard  to  say 
what  practical  effect  the  additions  and  subtractions  thus 
made  have  had  on  the  level  of  the  ocean ;  inasmuch  as 
such  additions  and  subtractions  might  be  either  inten- 
sified or  nullified,  by  contemporaneous  changes  in  the 
level  of  the  land.  And  no  one  has  yet  shown  that  any 


128  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [yr. 

such  great  melting  of  polar  ice,  and  consequent  raising 
of  the  level  of  the  water  of  the  ocean,  has  taken  place 
since  the  existing  atolls  began  to  be  formed. 

In  the  absence  of  any  evidence  that  the  sea  has  ever 
risen  to  the  extent  required  to  give  rise  to  the  encircling 
reefs  and  the  atolls,  Mr.  Darwin  adopted  the  opposite 
hypothesis,  viz.  that  the  land  has  undergone  extensive 
and  slow  depression  in  those  localities  in  which  these 
structures  exist. 

It  seems,  at  first,  a  startling  paradox,  to  suppose  that 
the  land  is  less  fixed  than  the  sea ;  but  that  such  is  the 
case  is  the  uniform  testimony  of  geology.  Beds  of 
sandstone  or  limestone,  thousands  of  feet  thick,  and  all 
full  of  marine  remains,  occur  in  various  parts  of  the 
earth's  surface,  and  prove,  beyond  a  doubt,  that  when 
these  beds  were  formed,  that  portion  of  the  sea-bottom 
which  they  then  occupied  underwent  a  slow  and  gradual 
depression  to  a  distance  which  cannot  have  been  less 
than  the  thickness  of  those  beds,  and  may  have  been 
very  much  greater.  In  supposing,  therefore,  that  the 
great  areas  of  the  Pacific  and  of  the  Indian  Ocean,  over 
which  atolls  and  encircling  reefs  are  found  scattered, 
have  undergone  a  depression  of  some  hundreds,  or,  it 
may  be,  thousands  of  feet,  Mr.  Darwin  made  a  supposi- 
tion which  had  nothing  forced  or  improbable,  but  was 
entirely  in  accordance  with  what  we  know  to  have 
taken  place  over  similarly  extensive  areas,  in  other 
periods  of  the  world's  history.  But  Mr.  Darwin  sub- 
iected  his  hypothesis  to  an  ingenious  indirect  test.  If 
his  view  be  correct,  it  is  clear  that  neither  atolls,  nor 
encircling  reefs,  should  be  found  in  those  portions  of  the 
ocean  in  which  we  have  reason  to  believe,  on  indepen- 
dent grounds,  that  the  sea-bottom  has  long  been  either 
stationary,  or  slowly  rising.  Now  it  is  known  that,  as 
a  general  rule,  the  level  of  the  land  is  either  stationary, 


vi. J  ON  CORAL  AND  CORAL  REEFS.  129 

or  is  undergoing  a  slow  upheaval,  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  active  volcanoes  ;  and,  therefore,  neither  atolls  nor 
encircling  reefs  ought  to  be  found  in  regions  in  which 
volcanoes  are  numerous  and  active.  And  this  turns  out 
to  be  the  case.  Appended  to  Mr.  Darwin's  great  work 
on  coral  reefs,  there  is  a  map  on  which  atolls  and  en- 
circling reefs  are  indicated  by  one  colour,  fringing  reefs 
by  another,  and  active  volcanoes  by  a  third.  And  it  is 
at  once  obvious  that  the  lines  of  active  volcanoes  lie 
around  the  margins  of  the  areas  occupied  by  the  atolls 
and  the  encircling  reefs.  It  is  exactly  as  if  the  up- 
heaving volcanic  agencies  had  lifted  up  the  edges  of 
these  great  areas,  while  their  centres  had  undergone  a 
corresponding  depression.  An  atoll  area  may,  in  short, 
be  pictured  as  a  kind  of  basin,  the  margins  of  which 
have  been  pushed  up  by  the  subterranean  forces,  to 
which  the  craters  of  the  volcanoes  have,  at  intervals, 
given  vent. 

Thus  we  must  imagine  the  area  of  the  Pacific  now 
covered  by  the  Polynesian  Archipelago,  as  having  been, 
at  some  former  time,  occupied  by  large  islands,  or,  may 
be,  by  a  great  continent,  with  the  ordinarily  diversified 
surface  of  plain,  and  hill,  and  mountain  chain.  The 
shores  of  this  great  land  were  doubtless  fringed  by  coral 
reefs  ;  and,  as  it  slowly  underwent  depression,  the  hilly 
regions,  converted  into  islands,  became,  at  first,  sur- 
rounded by  fringing  reefs,  and  then,  as  depression  went 
on,  these  became  converted  into  encircling  reefs,  and 
these,  finally,  into  atolls,  until  a  maze  of  reefs  and 
coral-girdled  islets  took  the  place  of  the  original  land 
masses. 

Thus  the  atolls  and  the  encircling  reefs  furnish  us 
with  clear,  though  indirect,  evidence  of  changes  in  the 
physical  geography  of  large  parts  of  the  earth's  surface  ; 
and  even,  as  my  lamented  friend,  the  late  Professor 


130  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vi. 

Jukes,  has  suggested,  give  us  indications  of  the  manner 
in  which  some  of  the  most  puzzling  facts  connected 
with  the  distribution  of  animals  have  been  brought 
about.  For  example,  Australia  and  New  Guinea  are 
separated  by  Torres  Straits,  a  broad  belt  of  sea  100  or 
120  miles  wide.  Nevertheless,  there  is  in  many  respects 
a  curious  resemblance  between  the  land  animals  which 
inhabit  New  Guinea  and  the  land  animals  which 
inhabit  Australia.  But,  at  the  same  time,  the  marine 
shell-fish  which  are  found  in  the  shallow  waters  of 
the  shores  of  New  Guinea,  are  quite  different  from 
those  which  are  met  with  upon  the  coasts  of  Australia. 
Now,  the  eastern  end  of  Torres  Straits  is  full  of  atolls, 
which,  in  fact,  form  the  northern  termination  of  the 
Great  Barrier  Eeef  which  skirts  the  eastern  coast  of 
Australia.  It  follows,  therefore,  that  the  eastern  end 
of  Torres  Straits  is  an  area  of  depression,  and  it  is 
very  possible,  and  on  many  grounds  highly  probable, 
that,  in  former  times,  Australia  and  New  Guinea  were 
directly  connected  together,  and  that  Torres  Straits  did 
not  exist.  If  this  were  the  case,  the  existence  of  casso- 
waries and  of  marsupial  quadrupeds,  both  in  New  Guinea 
and  in  Australia,  becomes  intelligible;  while  the  differ- 
ence between  the  littoral  molluscs  of  the  north  and  the 
south  shores  of  Torres  Straits  is  readily  explained  by 
the  great  probability  that,  when  the  depression  in 
question  took  place,  and  what  was,  at  first,  an  arm  of 
the  sea  became  converted  into  a  strait  separating  Aus- 
tralia from  New  Guinea,  the  northern  shore  of  this  new 
sea  became  tenanted  with  marine  animals  from  the  north, 
while  the  southern  shore  was  peopled  by  immigrants 
from  the  already  existing  marine  Australian  fauna. 

Inasmuch  as  the  growth  of  the  reef  depends  upon 
that  of  successive  generations  of  coral  polypes,  and 
as  each  generation  takes  a  certain  time  to  grow  to  its 


vi.]  ON  CORAL  AND  CORAL  REEFS.  131 

full  size,  and  can  only  separate  its  calcareous  skeleton 
from  the  water  in  which  it  lives  at  a  certain  rate,  it  is 
clear  that  the  reefs  are  records  not  only  of  changes  in 
physical  geography,  but  of  the  lapse  of  time.  It  is  by 
no  means  easy,  however,  to  estimate  the  exact  value  of 
reef-chronology,  and  the  attempts  which  have  been  made 
to  determine  the  rate  at  which  a  reef  grows  vertically, 
have  yielded  anything  but  precise  results.  A  cautious 
writer,  Mr.  Dana,  whose  extensive  study  of  corals  and 
coral  reefs  makes  him  an  eminently  competent  judge, 
states  his  conclusion  in  the  following  terms  : — 

"  The  rate  of  growth  of  the  common  branching  madrepore  is  not 

over  one  and  a  half  inches  a  year.     As  the  branches  are  open,  this 

would  not  be  equivalent  to  more  than  half  an  inch  in  height  of  solid 

coral  for  the  whole  surface  covered  by  the  madrepore  ;  and,  as  they  are 

also  porous,  to  not  over  three-eighths  of  an  inch  of  solid  limestone. 

But  a  coral  plantation  has  large  bare  patches  without  corals,  and  the 

eoral  sands  are  widely  distributed  by  currents,  part  of  them  to  depths 

over  one  hundred  feet  where  there  are  no  living  corals  ;  not  more  than 

one-sixth   of  the   surface   of  a  reef  region  is,  in  fact,  covered  with 

growing   species.      This    reduces   the   three-eighths  to   one-sixteenth. 

1   Shells  and  other  organic  relics  may  contribute  one-fourth  as  much  as 

;   corals.     At  the  outside,  the  average  upward  increase  of  the   whole 

i   reef-ground  per  year  would  not  exceed  one-eighth  of  an  inch. 

"Now  some  reefs  are  at  least  two  thousand  feet  thick,  which  at 
one-eighth  of  an  inch  a  year,  corresponds  to  one  hundred  and  ninety- 
two  thousand  years." * 

Halve,  or  quarter,  this  estimate  if  you  will,  in  order 
i  to  be  certain  of  erring  upon  the  right  side,  and  still  there 
remains  a  prodigious  period  during  which  the  ancestors 
1  of  the  existing  coral  polypes  have  been  undisturbedly  at 
work ;  and  during  which,  therefore,  the  climatal  condi- 
tions over  the  coral  area  must  have  been  much  what 
they  are  now. 

And  all  this  lapse  of  time  has  occurred  within  the 
most  recent  period  of  the  history  of  the  earth.  The 

1  Dana,  "  Manual  of  Geology/7  p.  591. 
7 


132  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vi. 

remains  of  reefs  formed  by  coral  polypes  of  different 
kinds  from  those  which  exist  now,  enter  largely  into  the 
composition  of  the  limestones  of  the  Jurassic  period  ; 
and  still  more  widely  different  coral  polypes  have  contri- 
buted their  quota  to  the  vast  thickness  of  the  carboni- 
ferous and  Devonian  strata.  Then  as  regards  the  latter 
group  of  rocks  in  America,  the  high  authority  already 
quoted  tells  us  : — 

"  The  Upper  Helderberg  period  is  eminently  the  coral  reef  period 
of  the  palaeozoic  ages.  Many  of  the  rocks  abound  in  coral,  and  are 
as  truly  coral  reefs  as  the  modern  reefs  of  the  Pacific.  The  corals  are 
sometimes  standing  on  the  rocks  in  the  position  they  had  v/hen 
growing  :  others  are  lying  in  fragments,  as  they  were  broken  and 
heaped  by  the  waves ;  and  others  were  reduced  to  a  compact  limestone 
by  the  finer  trituration  before  consolidation  into  rock.  This  compact 
variety  is  the  most  common  kind  among  the  coral  reef  rocks  of  the 
present  seas ;  and  it  often  contains  but  few  distinct  fossils,  although 
formed  in  water  that  abounded  in  life.  At  the  fall  of  the  Ohio,  near 
Louisville,  there  is  a  magnificent  display  of  the  old  reef.  Hemi- 
spherical Favosites,  five  or  six  feet  in  diameter,  lie  there  nearly 
as  perfect  as  when  they  were  covered  by  their  flower-like  polypes ; 
and  besides  these,  there  are  various  branching  corals,  and  a  profusion 
of  Gyatliopliyllia,  or  cup-corals." 1 

Thus,  in  all  the  great  periods  of  the  earth's  history  of 
which  we  know  anything,  a  part  of  the  then  living 
matter  has  had  the  form  of  polypes,  competent  to  sepa- 
rate from  the  water  of  the  sea  the  carbonate  of  lime 
necessary  for  their  own  skeletons.  Grain  by  grain,  and 
particle  by  particle,  they  have  built  up  vast  masses  of 
rock,  the  thickness  of  which  is  measured  by  hundreds  of 
feet,  and  their  area  by  thousands  of  square  miles.  The 
slow  oscillations  of  the  crust  of  the  earth,  producing  great 
changes  in  the  distribution  of  land  and  water,  have  often 
obliged  the  living  matter  of  the  coral- builders  to  shift 
the  locality  of  its  operations  ;  and,  by  variation  and 
adaptation  to  these  modifications  of  condition,  its  forma 

1  Dana,  "Manual  of  Geology,"  p.  272. 


vi.]  ON  CORAL  AND  CORAL  REEFS.  133 

have  as  often  changed.  The  work  it  has  done  in  the 
past  is,  for  the  most  part,  swept  away,  but  fragments 
remain ;  and,  if  there  were  no  other  evidence,  suffice  to 
prove  the  general  constancy  of  the  operations  of  Nature 
in  this  world,  through  periods  of  almost  inconceivable 
duration. 


VII. 

ON  THE  METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF 
ETHNOLOGY. 

ETHNOLOGY  is  the  science  which  determines  the  dis- 
tinctive characters  of  the  persistent  modifications  of 
mankind ;  which  ascertains  the  distribution  of  those 
modifications  in  present  and  past  times,  and  seeks  to 
discover  the  causes,  or  conditions  of  existence,  both 
of  the  modifications  and  of  their  distribution.  I  say 
"  persistent "  modifications,  because,  unless  incidentally, 
ethnology  has  nothing  to  do  with  chance  and  transitory 
peculiarities  of  human  structure.  And  I  speak  of 
"  persistent  modifications  "or  "  stocks  "  rather  than 
of  t( varieties,"  or  "races,"  or  "species,"  because  each  of 
these  last  well-known  terms  implies,  on  the  part  of  its 
employer,  a  preconceived  opinion  touching  one  of  those 
problems,  the  solution  of  which  is  the  ultimate  object 
of  the  science ;  and  in  regard  to  which,  therefore, 
ethnologists  are  especially  bound  to  keep  their  minds 
open  and  their  judgments  freely  balanced. 

Ethnology,  as  thus  defined,  is  a  branch  of  ANTHRO- 
POLOGY, the  great  science  which  unravels  the  complexities 
of  human  structure ;  traces  out  the  relations  of  man  to 
other  animals;  studies  all  that  is  especially  human  in  the 
mode  in  which  man's  complex  functions  are  performed; 


vii.]  METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.  135 

and  searches  after  the  conditions  which  have  determined 
his  presence  in  the  world.  And  anthropology  is  a  section 
of  ZOOLOGY,  which  again  is  the  animal  half  of  BIOLOGY 
— the  science  of  life  and  living  things. 

Such  is  the  position  of  ethnology,  such  are  the  objects 
of  the  ethnologist.  The  paths  or  methods,  by  following 
which  he  may  hope  to  reach  his  goal,  are  diverse.  He  may 
work  at  man  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  pure  zoologist, 
and  investigate  the  anatomical  and  physiological  pecu- 
liarities of  Negroes,  Australians,  or  Mongolians,  just  as 
he  would  inquire  into  those  of  pointers,  terriers,  and 
turnspits, — "  persistent  modifications  "  of  man's  almost 
universal  companion.  Or  he  may  seek  aid  from  researches 
into  the  most  human  manifestation  of  humanity — 
Language  ;  and  assuming  that  what  is  true  of  speech  is 
true  of  the  speaker — a  hypothesis  as  questionable  in 
science  as  it  is  in  ordinary  life — he  may  apply  to  man- 
kind themselves  the  conclusions  drawn  from  a  searching 
analysis  of  their  words  and  grammatical  forms. 

Or,  the  ethnologist  may  turn  to  the  study  of  the 
practical  life  of  men ;  and  relying  upon  the  inherent 
conservatism  and  small  inventiveness  of  untutored  man- 
kind, he  may  hope  to  discover  in  manners  and  customs, 
or  in  weapons,  dwellings,  and  other  handiwork,  a  clue  to 
the  origin  of  the  resemblances  and  differences  of  nations. 
Or,  he  may  resort  to  that  kind  of  evidence  which  is 
yielded  by  History  proper,  and  consists  of  the  beliefs  of 
men  concerning  past  events,  embodied  in  traditional,  or 
in  written,  testimony.  Or,  when  that  thread  breaks, 
Archaeology,  which  is  the  interpretation  of  the  unrecorded 
remains  of  man's  works,  belonging  to  the  epoch  since  the 
world  has  reached  its  present  condition,  may  still  guide 
him.  And,  when  even  the  dim  light  of  archaeology 
fades,  there  yet  remains  Palaeontology,  which,  in  these 
latter  years,  has  brought  to  daylight  once  more  the 


136  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vn. 

exuvia  of  ancient  populations,  whose  world  was  not  our 
world,  who  have  been  buried  in  river  beds  immemorially 
dry,  or  carried  by  the  rush  of  waters  into  caves,  inac- 
cessible to  inundation  since  the  dawn  of  tradition. 

Along  each,  or  all,  of  these  paths  the  ethnologist  may 
press  towards  his  goal ;  but  they  are  not  equally  straight, 
or  sure,  or  easy  to  tread.  The  way  of  palaeontology  has 
but  just  been  laid  open  to  us.  Archaeological  and  histo- 
rical investigations  are  of  great  value  for  all  those  peoples 
whose  ancient  state  has  differed  widely  from  their  pre- 
sent condition,  and  who  have  the  good  or  evil  fortune 
to  possess  a  history.  But  on  taking  a  broad  survey  of 
the  world,  it  is  astonishing  how  few  nations  present 
either  condition.  Eespecting  five-sixths  of  the  persistent 
modifications  of  mankind,  history  and  archaeology  are 
absolutely  silent.  For  half  the  rest,  they  might  as  well  be 
silent  for  anything  that  is  to  be  made  of  their  testimony. 
And,  finally,  when  the  question  arises  as  to  what  was  the 
condition  of  mankind  more  than  a  paltry  two  or  three 
thousand  years  ago,  history  and  archaeology  are,  for  the 
most  part,  mere  dumb  dogs.  What  light  does  either  of 
these  branches  of  knowledge  throw  on  the  past  of  the 
man  of  the  New  World,  if  we  except  the  Central  Ameri- 
cans and  the  Peruvians ;  on  that  of  the  Africans,  save 
those  of  the  valley  of  the  Nile  and  a  fringe  of  the  Medi- 
terranean ;  on  that  of  all  the  Polynesian,  Australian, 
and  central  Asiatic  peoples,  the  former  of  whom  probably, 
and  the  last  certainly,  were,  at  the  dawn  of  history, 
substantially  what  they  are  now?  While  thankfully 
accepting  what  history  has  to  give  him,  therefore,  the 
ethnologist  must  not  look  for  too  much  from  her. 

Is  more  to  be  expected  from  inquiries  into  the  customs 
and  handicrafts  of  men  ?  It  is  to  be  feared  not.  In 
reasoning  from  identity  of  custom  to  identity  of  stock 
the  difficulty  always  obtrudes  itself,  that  the  minds  of 


vii.]  METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.  137 

men  being  everywhere  similar,  differing  in  quality  and 
quantity  but  not  in  kind  of  faculty,  like  circumstances 
must  tend  to  produce  like  contrivances  ;  at  any  rate,  so 
long  as  the  need  to  be  met  and  conquered  is  of  a  very 
simple  kind.  That  two  nations  use  calabashes  or  shells 
for  drinking-vessels,  or  that  they  employ  spears,  or  clubs, 
or  swords  and  axes  of  stone  and  metal  as  weapons  and 
implements,  cannot  be  regarded  as  evidence  that  these 
two  nations  had  a  common  origin,  or  even  that  inter- 
communication ever  took  place  between  them  ;  seeing 
that  the  convenience  of  using  calabashes  or  shells  for 
such  purposes,  and  the  advantage  of  poking  an  enemy 
with  a  sharp  stick,  or  hitting  him  with  a  heavy  one, 
must  be  early  forced  by  nature  upon  the  mind  of  even 
the  stupidest  savage.  And  when  he  had  found  out  the 
use  of  a  stick,  he  would  need  no  prompting  to  discover  the 
value  of  a  chipped  or  wetted  stone,  or  an  angular  piece 
of  native  metal,  for  the  same  object.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  may  be  doubted  whether  the  chances  are  not  greatly 
against  independent  peoples  arriving  at  tho  manufacture 
of  a  boomerang,  or  of  a  bow  ;  which  last,  if  one  comes  to 
think  of  it,  is  a  rather  complicated  apparatus ;  and  the 
tracing  of  the  distribution  of  inventions  as  complex  as 
these,  and  of  such  strange  customs  as  betel-chewing  and 
tobacco-smoking,  may  afford  valuable  ethnological  hints. 

Since  the  time  of  Leibnitz,  and  guided  by  such  men 
as  Humboldt,  Abel  Remusat,  and  Klaproth,  Philology 
has  taken  far  higher  ground.  Thus  Prichard  affirms  that 
"  the  history  of  nations,  termed  Ethnology,  must  be 
mainly  founded  on  the  relations  of  their  languages." 

An  eminent  living  philologer,  August  Schleicher,  in  a 
recent  essay,  puts  forward  the  claims  of  his  science  still 
more  forcibly : — 

"  If,  however,  language  is  the  human  KO.T  i&xyv,  the  suggestion  arises 
whether  it  should  not  form  the  basis  of  any  scientific  systematic 


138  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vn. 

arrangement  of   mankind  ;  whether   the  foundation   of   the  natural 
classification  of  the  genus  Homo  has  not  been  discovered  in  it. 

"  How  little  constant  are  cranial  peculiarities  and  other  so-called 
race  characters  !  Language,  on  the  other  hand,  is  always  a  perfectly 
constant  diagnostic.  A  German  may  occasionally  compete  in  hair  and 
prognathism  with  a  negro,  but  a  negro  language  will  never  be  his 
mother  tongue.  Of  how  little  importance  for  mankind  the  so-called 
race  characters  are,  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  speakers  of  languages 
belonging  to  one  and  the  same  linguistic  family  may  exhibit  the 
peculiarities  of  various  races.  Thus  the  settled  Osmauli  Turk  exhibits 
Caucasian  characters,  while  other  so-called  Tartarie  Turks  exemplify 
the  Mongol  type.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Magyar  and  the  Basque  do  not 
depart  in  any  essential  physical  peculiarity  from  the  Indo-Germans, 
whilst  the  Magyar,  Basque,  and  Indo-Ger manic  tongues  are  widely 
different.  Apart  from  their  inconstancy,  again,  the  so-called  race 
characters  can  hardly  yield  a  scientifically  natural  system.  Languages, 
on  the  otner  hand,  readily  fall  into  a  natural  arrangement,  like  that 
of  which  other  vital  products  are  susceptible,  especially  when  viewed 
from  their  morphological  side.  .  .  .  The  externally  visible  structure 
of  the  cerebral  and  facial  skeletons,  and  of  the  body  generally,  is  less 
important  than  that  no  less  material  but  infinitely  more  delicate 
corporeal  structure,  the  function  of  which  is  speech.  I  conceive, 
therefore,  that  the  natural  classification  of  languages  is  also  the  natural 
classification  of  mankind.  With  language,  moreover,  all  the  higher 
manifestations  of  man's  vital  activity  are  closely  interwoven,  so  that 
these  receive  due  recognition  in  and  by  that  of  speech." l 

"Without  the  least  desire  to  depreciate  the  value  of 
philology  as  an  adjuvant  to  ethnology,  I  must  venture  to 
doubt,  with  Kudolphi,  Desmoulins,  Crawfurd,  and  others, 
its  title  to  the  leading  position  claimed  for  it  by  the 
writers  whom  I  have  just  quoted.  On  the  contrary,  it 
seems  to  me  obvious  that,  though,  in  the  absence  of  any 
evidence  to  the  contrary,  unity  of  languages  may  afford 
a  certain  presumption  in  favour  of  the  unity  of  stock 
of  the  peoples  speaking  those  languages,  it  cannot  be  held 
to  prove  that  unity  of  stock,  unless  philologers  are  prepared 
to  demonstrate,  that  no  nation  can  lose  its  language  and 

1  August  ScHeicher.  Ueber  die  Bedeutung  der  Sprache  fur  die  Natur- 
gescliichte  des  Menschen,  pp.  16 — 18.  Weimar,  1858. 


VIL]  METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.  139 

acquire  that  of  a  distinct  nation,  without  a  change  of  blood 
corresponding  with  the  change  of  language.  Desmoulins 
long  ago  put  this  argument  exceedingly  well : — 

"  Let  us  imagine  the  recurrence  of  one  of  those  slow,  or  sudden, 
political  revolutions,  or  say  of  those  secular  changes  which  among 
different  people  and  at  different  epochs  have  annihilated  historical 
monuments  and  even  extinguished  tradition.  In  that  case,  the  evidence, 
now  so  clear,  that  the  negroes  of  Hayti  were  slaves  imported  by  a 
French  colony,  who,  by  the  very  effect  of  the  subordination  involved 
in  slavery,  lost  their  own  diverse  languages  and  adopted  that  of  their 
masters,  would  vanish.  And  metaphysical  philosophers,  observing  the 
identity  of  Haytian  French  with  that  spoken  on  the  shores  of  the 
Seine  and  the  Loire,  would  argue  that  the  men  of  St.  Domingo  with 
woolly  heads,  black  and  oily  skins,  small  calves,  and  slightly  bent 
knees,  are  of  the  same  race,  descended  from  the  same  parental  stock, 
as  the  Frenchmen  with  silky  brown,  chestnut,  or  fair  hair,  and  white 
skins.  For  they  would  say,  their  languages  are  more  similar  than 
French  is  to  German  or  Spanish."1 

It  must  not  be  imagined  that  the  case  put  by  Desmoulins 
is  a  merely  hypothetical  one.  Events  precisely  similar 
to  the  transport  of  a  body  of  Africans  to  the  West  India 
Islands,  indeed,  cannot  have  happened  among  uncivilized 
races,  but  similar  results  have  followed  the  importation 
of  bodies  of  conquerors  among  an  enslaved  people  over 
and  over  again.  There  is  hardly  a  country  in  Europe  in 
which  two  or  more  nations  speaking  widely  different 
tongues  have  not  become  intermixed  ;  and  there  is  hardly 
a  language  of  Europe  of  which  we  have  any  right  to 
think  that  its  structure  affords  a  just  indication  of  the 
amount  of  that  intermixture. 

As  Dr.  Latham  has  well  said  : — 

"It  is  certain  that  the  language  of  England  is  of  Anglo-Saxon 
origin,  and  that  the  remains  of  the  original  Keltic  are  unimportant. 
It  is  by  no  means  so  certain  that  the  blood  of  Englishmen  is  equally 
Germanic.  A  vast  amount  of  Kelticism,  not  found  in  our  tongue,  very 
probably  exists  in  our  pedigrees.  The  ethnology  of  France  is  still 
more  complicated.  Many  writers  make  the  Parisian  a  Roman  on  the 

1  Desmoulins,  "  Histoire  Naturelle  des  Races  Humaines,"  p.  345.    1826. 


140  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vn. 

strength  Q£  his.  language  ;  whilst  others  make  him  a  Kelt  011  the 
strength  of  certain  moral  characteristics,  combined  with  the  previous 
Kelticism  of  the  original  Gauls.  Spanish  and  Portuguese,  as  languages, 
are  derivations  from  the  Latin  ;  Spain  and  Portugal,  as  countries,  are 
Iberic,  Latin,  Gothic,  and  Arab,  in  different  proportions.  Italian  is 
modern  Latin  all  the  world  over;  yet  surely  there  must  be  much 
Keltic  blood  in  Lombardy,  and  much  Etruscan  intermixture  in 
Tuscany. 

"  In  the  ninth  century  every  man  between  the  Elbe  and  the  Kiemen 
spoke  some  Slavonic  dialect ;  they  now  nearly  all  speak  German. 
Surely  the  blood  is  less  exclusively  Gothic  than  the  speech."1 

In  other  words,  what  philologer,  if  he  had  nothing 
but  the  vocabulary  and  grammar  of  the  French  and 
English  languages  to  guide  him,  would  dream  of  the 
real  causes  of  the  unlikeness  of  a  Norman  to  a  Pro- 
vencal, of  an  Orcadian  to  a  Cornishman  ?  How  readily 
might  he  be  led  to  suppose  that  the  different  climatal 
conditions  to  which  these  speakers  of  one  tongue  have 
so  long  been  exposed,  have  caused  their  physical  dif- 
ferences ;  and  how  little  would  he  suspect  that  these  are 
due  (as  we  happen  to  know  they  are)  to  wide  differences 
of  blood. 

Few  take  duly  into  account  the  evidence  which  exists 
as  to  the  ease  with  which  unlettered  savages  gain  or 
lose  a  language.  Captain  Erskine,  in  his  interesting 
"  Journal  of  a  Cruise  among  the  Islands  of  the  Western 
Pacific/'  especially  remarks  upon  the  "avidity  with 
which  the  inhabitants  of  the  polyglot  islands  of  Melanesia, 
from  New  Caledonia  to  the  Solomon  Islands,  adopt  the 
improvements  of  a  more  perfect  language  than  their 
own,  which  different  causes  and  accidental  communica- 
tion still  continue  to  bring  to  them ; "  and  he  adds  that 
"  among  the  Melanesian  islands  scarcely  one  was  found 
by  us  which  did  not  possess,  in  some  cases  still  im- 
perfectly, the  decimal  system  of  numeration  in  addition 
to  their  own,  in  which  they  reckon  only  to  five." 
1  Latham,  "Man  and  Ms  Migrations,"  p.  171. 


..SIT  7] 

vii.]  METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF 

Yet  how  much  philological  reasoning 
affinity  or  diversity  of  two  distinct  peoples  has   been 
based  on  the  mere  comparison  of  numerals ! 

But  the  most  instructive  example  of  the  fallacy 
which  may  attach  to  merely  philological  reasonings,  is 
that  afforded  by  the  Feejeans,  who  are,  physically,  so 
intimately  connected  with  the  adjacent  Negritos  of  New 
Caledonia,  &c.,  that  no  one  can  doubt  to  what  stock 
they  belong,  and  who  yet,  in  the  form  and  substance  of 
their  language,  are  Polynesian.  The  case  is  as  remark- 
able as  if  the  Canary  Islands  should  have  been  found  to 
be  inhabited  by  negroes  speaking  Arabic,  or  some  other 
clearly  Semitic  dialect,  as  their  mother  tongue.  As  it 
happens,  the  physical  peculiarities  of  the  Feejeans  are 
so  striking,  and  the  conditions  under  which  they  live 
are  so  similar  to  those  of  the  Polynesians,  that  no  one 
has  ventured  to  suggest  that  they  are  merely  modified 
Polynesians — a  suggestion  which  could  otherwise  cer- 
tainly have  been  made.  But  if  languages  may  be  thus 
transferred  from  one  stock  to  another,  without  any 
corresponding  intermixture  of  blood,  what  ethnological 
value  has  philology? — what  security  does  unity  of 
language  afford  us  that  the  speakers  of  that  language 
may  not  have  sprung  from  two,  or  three,  or  a  dozen 
distinct  sources? 

Thus  we  come,  at  last,  to  the  purely  zoological  method, 
from  which  it  is  not  unnatural  to  expect  more  than 
from  any  other,  seeing  that,  after  all,  the  problems  of 
ethnology  are  simply  those  which  are  presented  to  the 
zoologist  by  every  widely  distributed  animal  he  studies 
Ine  father  of  modern  zoology  seems  to  have  had  no 
doubt  upon  this  point.  At  the  twenty-eighth  page  of 
the  standard  twelfth  edition  of  the  "  Systema  Naturae  " 
in  fact,  we  find : — 


142 


CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES. 


[vn. 


I.  PRIMATES. 

Denies  pnmores  incisores :  superiores  IV.  paralleli,  mammae 
pectorales  II. 

1.  HOMO.         Nosce  te  ipsum. 

Sapiens.  1.  II.  diurnus  :  varians  cultura,  loco. 

Ferus.  Tetrapus,  mutus,  hirsutus. 


Americanus  a.  Rufus,  cholericus,  rectus — Pills  nigris,  rectis,  crassis — • 
Naribus  patulis — Facie  ephelitica :  Mento  subimberbi. 

Pertinax,  contentus,  liber.  Pingit  se  lineis  dsedaleis 
rub  r  is. 

Regitur  Consuetudine. 

Europceus    /3.  Albus  sanguineus  torosus.  Pilis  flavescentibus,  prolixis. 
Oculis  coeruleis. 

Levis,  argutus,  inventor.  Tegitur  Vestimentis  arctis. 
Regitur  Ritibus. 

Asiaticus     y.  Luridus,  melancholicus,    rigidus.     Pilis   nigricantibus. 
Oculis   fuscis.     Severus,  fastuosus,   avarus.     Tegitur 
Indumentis  laxis. 
Regitur  Opinionibus. 

Afer  S.   Niger,  phlegmaticus,  laxns.  Pilis  atris,  contortuplicatis. 

Cute    holosericea.       Naso    simo.      Labiis    tumidis. 
Feminis  sinus  pudoris. 
Mammae  lactantes  prolixce. 

Vafer,  segnis,  negligens.  Ungit  BQ  pingui.  Regitur 
Arbitrio. 

Monstrosus  e.  Solo  (a)  et  arte  (b  c)  variat.  : 

a.  Alpini  parvi,  agiles,  timidi. 
Patagonici  magni,  segnes. 

b.  Monorchides  ut  minus  fertiles  :  Hottentotti. 
Juncece  puellae,  abdomine  attenuate  :  Europoeae. 

c.  Macrocephali  capiti  conico  :  Chinenses. 
Plagiocephali  capite  antice  compresso  :  Canadenses. 

Turn  a  few  pages  further  on  in  the  same  volume,  and 
there  appears,  with  a  fine  impartiality  in  the  distribution 
of  capitals  and  sub-divisional  headings : — 


VIT.]  METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.  143 

III.  FER.E. 
Denies  primores  superiores  sex,  acutiusculi.     Canini  solitarii. 

12.  CANIS.  Denies  primores  superiores  VI.:  laterales  longiores 
distantes  :  iutermedii  lobati.  Inferiores  VI. :  laterales 
lobati. 

Laniarii  solitarii,  incurvati. 
Molares  VI.  s.  VII.  (pluresve  quam  in  reliquis). 

familiaris  1.     C.  cauda  (sinistrorsum)  recurvata 

domesticus  a.     auriculis  erectis,  cauda  subtus  lanata. 
sagax         (3.     auriculis  pendulis,  digito  spurio  ad  tibias  posticas. 
grajus        y.     magnitudine   lupi,   trunco  curvato,  rostro   attenuate, 
&c.  &c. 

Linnseus'  definition  of  what  he  considers  to  be  mere 
varieties  of  the  species  Man  are,  it  will  be  observed,  as 
completely  free  from  any  allusion  to  linguistic  pecu- 
liarities as  those  brief  and  pregnant  sentences  in  which 
he  sketches  the  characters  of  the  varieties  of  the  species 
Dog.  "  Pilis  nigris,  naribus  patulis  "  may  be  set  against 
"auriculis  erectis,  cauda  subtus  lanata;"  while  the 
remarks  on  the  morals  and  manners  of  the  human 
subject  seem  as  if  they  were  thrown  in  merely  by  way 
of  makeweight. 

Buff  on,  Blumenbach  (the  founder  of  ethnology  as  a 
special  science),  Rudolphi,  Bory  de  St.  Vincent,  Des- 
moulins,  Cuvier,  Eetzius,  indeed  I  may  say  all  the 
naturalists  proper,  have  dealt  with  man  from  a  no  less 
completely  zoological  point  of  view;  while,  as  might 
have  been  expected,  those  who  have  been  least  natu- 
ralists, and  most  linguists,  have  most  neglected  the 
zoological  method,  the  neglect  culminating  in  those 
who  have  been  altogether  devoid  of  acquaintance  with 
anatomy, 

Prichard's  proposition,  that  language  is  more  persistent 
than  physical  characters,  >is  one  which  has  never  been 


144  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vn. 

proved,  and  indeed  admits  of  no  proof,  seeing  that  the 
records  of  language  do  not  extend  so  far  as  those  of 
physical  characters.  But,  until  the  superior  tenacity  of 
linguistic  over  physical  peculiarities  is  shown,  and  until 
the  abundant  evidence  which  exists,  that  the  language 
of  a  people  may  change  without  corresponding  physical 
change  in  that  people,  is  shown  to  be  valueless,  it  is 
plain  that  the  zoological  court  of  appeal  is  the  highest 
for  the  ethnologist,  and  that  no  evidence  can  be  set 
against  that  derived  from  physical  characters. 

What,  then,  will  a  new  survey  of  mankind  from  the 
Linnean  point  of  view  teach  us  ? 

The  great  antipodal  block  of  land  we  call  Australia 
has,  speaking  roughly,  the  form  of  a  vast  quadrangle, 
2,000  miles  on  the  side,  and  extends  from  the  hottest 
tropical,  to  the  middle  of  the  temperate,  zone.  Setting 
aside  the  foreign  colonists  introduced  within  the  last 
century,  it  is  inhabited  by  people  no  less  remarkable 
for  the  uniformity,  than  for  the  singularity,  of  their 
physical  characters  and  social  state.  For  the  most  part 
of  fair  stature,  erect  and  well  built,  except  for  an 
unusual  slenderness  of  the  lower  limbs,  the  AUSTRALIANS 
have  dark,  usually  chocolate-coloured  skins  ;  fine  dark 
wavy  hair  ;  dark  eyes,  overhung  by  beetle  brows  ;  coarse, 
projecting  jaws ;  broad  and  dilated,  but  not  especially 
flattened,  noses ;  and  lips  which,  though  prominent,  are 
eminently  flexible. 

The  skulls  of  these  people  are  always  long  and  narrow, 
with  a  smaller  development  of  the  frontal  sinuses  than 
usually  corresponds  with  such  largely  developed  brow 
ridges.  An  Australian  skull  of  a  round  form,  or  one  the 
transverse  diameter  of  which  exceeds  eight-tenths  of  its 
length,  has  never  been  seen.  These  people,  in  a  word, 
are  eminently  "  dolichocephalic,"  or  long-headed ;  but, 


vir.]  METHODS  AND  KESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.  145 

with  this  one  limitation,  their  crania  present  considerable 
variations,  some  being  comparatively  high  and  arched, 
while  others  are  more  remarkably  depressed  than  almost 
any  other  human  skulls. 

The  female  pelvis  differs  comparatively  little  from  the 
European  ;  but  in  the  pelves  of  male  Australians  which 
I  have  examined,  the  antero-posterior  and  transverse 
diameters  approach  equality  more  nearly  than  is  the 
case  in  Europeans. 

No  Australian  tribe  has  ever  been  known  to  cultivate 
the  ground,  to  use  metals,  pottery,  or  any  kind  of  textile 
fabric.  They  rarely  construct  huts.  Their  means  of 
navigation  are  limited  to  rafts  or  canoes,  made  of  sheets 
of  bark.  Clothing,  except  skin  cloaks  for  protection 
from  cold,  is  a  superfluity  with  which  they  dispense; 
and  though  they  have  some  singular  weapons,  almost 
peculiar  to  themselves,  they  are  wholly  unacquainted 
with  bows  and  arrows. 

It  is  but  a  step,  as  it  were,  across  Bass's  Straits  to 
Tasmania.  Neither  climate  nor  the  characteristic  forms 
of  vegetable  or  animal  life  change  largely  on  the  south 
side  of  the  Straits,  but  the  early  voyagers  found  Man 
singularly  different  from  him  on  the  north  side.  The 
skin  of  the  Tasmanian  was  dark,  though  he  lived  between 
parallels  of  latitude  corresponding  with  those  of  middle 
Europe  in  our  own  hemisphere  ;  his  jaws  projected,  his 
head  was  long  and  narrow ;  his  civilization  was  about  on 
a  footing  with  that  of  the  Australian,  if  not  lower,  for  I 
cannot  discover  that  the  Tasmanian  understood  the  use 
of  the  thro  wing-stick.  But  he  differed  from  the  Aus- 
tralian in  his  woolly,  negro-like  hair,  whence  the 
name  of  NEGRITO,  which  has  been  applied  to  him  and 
his  congeners. 

Such  Negritos — differing  more  or  less  from  the  Tasma- 
nian, but  agreeing  with  him  in  dark  skin  and  woolly 


146  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vn. 

hair — occupy  New  Caledonia,  the  New  Hebrides,  the 
Louisiade  Archipelago  ;  and  stretching  to  the  Papuan 
Islands,  and  for  a  doubtful  extent  beyond  them  to  the 
north  and  west,  form  a  sort  of  belt,  or  zone,  of  Negrito 
population,  interposed  between  the  Australians  on  the 
west  and  the  inhabitants  of  the  great  majority  of  the 
Pacific  islands  on  the  east. 

The  cranial  characters  of  the  Negritos  vary  consider- 
ably more  than  those  of  their  skin  and  hair,  the  most 
notable  circumstance  being  the  strong  Australian  aspect 
which  distinguishes  many  Negrito  skulls,  while  others 
tend  rather  towards  forms  common  in  the  Polynesian 
islands. 

In  civilization,  New  Caledonia  exhibits  an  advance 
upon  Tasmania,  and,  farther  north,  there  is  a  still  greater 
improvement.  But  the  bows  and  arrows,  the  perched 
houses,  the  outrigger  canoes,  the  habits  of  betel-chewing 
and  of  kawa-drinking,  which  abound  more  or  less  among 
the  northern  Negritos,  are  probably  to  be  regarded  not 
as  the  products  of  an  indigenous  civilization,  but  merely 
as  indications  of  the  extent  to  which  foreign  influences 
have  modified  the  primitive  social  state  of  these  people. 

From  Tasmania  or  New  Caledonia,  to  New  Zealand  or 
Tongataboo,  is  again  but  a  brief  voyage ;  but  it  brings 
about  a  still  more  notable  change  in  the  aspect  of  the 
indigenous  population  than  that  effected  by  the  passage 
of  Bass's  Straits.  Instead  of  being  chocolate-coloured 
people,  the  Maories  andTongans  are  light  brown ;  instead 
of  woolly,  they  have  straight,  or  wavy,  black  hair.  And 
if  from  New  Zealand,  we  travel  some  5,000  miles  east  to 
Easter  Island ;  and  from  Easter  Island,  for  as  great  a 
distance  north-west,  to  the  Sandwich  Islands  ;  and  thence 
7,000  miles,  westward  and  southward,  to  Sumatra  ;  and 
even  across  the  Indian  Ocean,  into  the  interior  of  Mada- 
gascar, we  shall  everywhere  meet  with  people  whose  hair 


vn/j  METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.  147 

is  straight  or  wavy,  and  whose  skins  exhibit  various 
shades  of  brown.  These  are  the  Polynesians,  Micro- 
nesians,  Indonesians,  whom  Latham  has  grouped  together 
under  the  common  title  of  AMPHINESIANS. 

The  cranial  characters  of  these  people,  as  of  the 
Negritos,  are  less  constant  than  those  of  their  skin  and 
hair.  The  Maori  has  a  long  skull ;  the  Sandwich 
Islander  a  broad  skull.  Some,  like  these,  have  strong 
brow  ridges  ;  others,  like  the  Dayaks  and  many  Poly- 
nesians, have  hardly  any  nasal  indentation. 

It  is  only  in  the  westernmost  parts  of  their  area  that 
the  Amphinesian  nations  know  anything  about  bows  and 
arrows  as  weapons,  or  are  acquainted  with  the  use  of 
metals  or  with  pottery.  Everywhere  they  cultivate  the 
ground,  construct  houses,  and  skilfully  build  and  manage 
outrigger,  or  double,  canoes ;  while,  almost  everywhere, 
they  use  some  kind  of  fa.bric  for  clothing. 

Between  Easter  Island,  or  the  Sandwich  Islands,  and 
any  part  of  the  American  coast  is  a  much  wider  interval 
than  that  between  Tasmania  and  New  Zealand,  but  the 
ethnological  interval  between  the  American  and  the 
Polynesian  is  less  than  that  between  either  of  the  pre- 
viously named  stocks. 

The  typical  AMERICAN  has  straight  black  hair  and 
dark  eyes,  his  skin  exhibiting  various  shades  of  reddish 
or  yellowish  brown,  sometimes  inclining  to  olive.  The 
face  is  broad  and  scantily  bearded ;  the  skull  wide  and 
high.  Such  people  extend  from  Patagonia  to  Mexico, 
and  much  farther  north  along  the  west  coast.  In  the 
main  a  race  of  hunters,  they  had  nevertheless,  at  the  time 
of  the  discovery  of  the  Americas,  attained  a  remark- 
able degree  of  civilization  in  some  localities.  They  had 
domesticated  ruminants,  and  not  only  practised  agri- 
culture, but  had  learned  the  value  of  irrigation.  They 
manufactured  textile  fabrics,  were  masters  of  the  potter's 


148  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vn. 

art,  and  knew  how  to  erect  massive  buildings  of  stone. 
They  understood  the  working  of  the  precious,  though 
not  of  the  useful,  metals ;  and  had  even  attained  to  a 
rude  kind  of  hieroglyphic,  or  picture,  writing. 

The  Americans  not  only  employ  the  bow  and  arrow, 
but,  like  some  Amphinesians,  the  blow-pipe,  as  offensive 
weapons  :  but  I  am  not  aware  that  the  outrigger  canoe 
has  ever  been  observed  among  them. 

I  have  reason  to  suspect  that  some  of  the  Fuegian 
tribes  differ  cranially  from  the  typical  Americans ;  and 
the  Northern  and  Eastern  American  tribes  have  longer 
skulls  than  their  Southern  compatriots.  But  the  ESQUI- 
MAUX, who  roam  on  the  desolate  and  ice-bound  coasts  of 
Arctic  America,  certainly  present  us  with  a  new  stock. 
The  Esquimaux  (among  whom  the  Greenlanders  are 
included),  in  fact,  though  they  share  the  straight  black 
hair  of  the  proper  Americans,  are  a  duller  complexioned, 
shorter,  and  more  squat  people,  and  they  have  still  more 
prominent  cheek-bones.  But  the  circumstance  which 
most  completely  separates  them  from  the  typical  Ameri- 
cans, is  the  form  of  their  skulls,  which  instead  of  being 
broad,  high,  and  truncated  behind,  are  eminently  long, 
usually  low,  and  prolonged  backwards. 

These  Hyperborean  people  clothe  themselves  in  skins, 
know  nothing  of  pottery,  and  hardly  anything  of  metals. 
Dependent  for  existence  upon  the  produce  of  the  chase, 
the  seal  and  the  whale  are  to  them  what  the  cocoa-nut 
tree  and  the  plantain  are  to  the  savages  of  more  genial 
climates.  Not  only  are  those  animals  meat  and  rai- 
ment, but  they  are  canoes,  sledges,  weapons,  tools, 
windows,  and  fire ;  while  they  support  the  dog,  who 
is  the  indispensable  ally  and  beast  of  burden  of  the 
Esquimaux. 

It  is  admitted  that  the  Tchuktchi,  on  the  eastern 
side  of  Behring's  Straits,  are,  in  all  essential  respects, 


vii.]  METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.  149 

Esquimaux ;  and  I  do  not  know  that  there  is  any 
satisfactory  evidence  to  show  that  the  Tunguses  and 
Samoiedes  do  not  essentially  share  the  physical  characters 
of  the  same  people.  Southward,  there  are  indications 
of  Esquimaux  characters  among  the  Japanese,  and 
it  is  possible  that  their  influence  may  be  traced  yet 
further. 

However  this  may  be,  Eastern  Asia,  from  Mantchouria 
to  Siam,  Thibet,  and  Northern  Hindostan,  is  continuously 
inhabited  by  men,  usually  of  short  stature,  with  skins 
varying  in  colour  from  yellow  to  olive  ;  with  broad  cheek- 
bones and  faces  that,  owing  to  the  insignificance  of  the 
nose,  are  exceedingly  flat ;  and  with  small,  obliquely-set, 
black  eyes  and  straight  black  hair,  which  sometimes 
attains  a  very  great  length  upon  the  scalp,  but  is  always 
scanty  upon  the  face  and  body.  The  skull  is  never 
much  elongated,  and  is,  generally,  remarkably  broad  and 
rounded,  with  hardly  any  nasal  depression,  and  but  slight, 
if  any,  projection  of  the  jaws. 

Many  of  these  people,  for  whom  the  old  name  of 
MONGOLIANS  may  be  retained,  are  nomades  ;  others,  as 
the  Chinese,  have  attained  a  remarkable  and  apparently 
indigenous  civilization,  only  surpassed  by  that  of  Europe. 
At  the  north-western  extremity  of  Europe  the  Lapps 
repeat  the  characters  of  the  Eastern  Asiatics.  Between 
these  extreme  points,  the  Mongolian  stock  is  not  con- 
tinuous1, but  is  represented  by  a  chain  of  more  or  less 
isolated  tribes,  who  pass  under  the  name  of  Calmucks 
and  Tartars,  and  form  Mongolian  islands,  as  it  were,  in 
the  midst  of  an  ocean  of  other  people. 

The  waves  of  this  ocean  are  the  nations  for  whom,  in 
order  to  avoid  the  endless  confusion  produced  by  our 
present  half -physical,  half -philological  classification,  I 
shall  use  a  new  name — XANTHOCHROI — indicating  that 
they  are  "yellow"  haired  and  "pale"  in  complexion. 


150  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vn. 

The  Chinese  historians  of  the  Han  dynasty,  writing  in 
the  third  century  before  our  era,  describe,  with  much 
minuteness,  certain  numerous  and  powerful  barbarians 
with  "  yellow  hair,  green  eyes,  and  prominent  noses," 
who,  the  black-haired,  skew-eyed,  and  flat-nosed  an- 
nalists remark  in  passing,  are  "just  like  the  apes  from 
whom  they  are  descended/'  These  people  held,  in  force, 
the  upper  waters  of  the  Yenisei,  and  thence  under  various 
names  stretched  southward  to  Thibet  and  Kashgar.  Fair- 
haired  and  blue-eyed  northern  enemies  were  no  less 
known  to  the  ancient  Hindoos,  to  the  Persians,  and  to  the 
Egyptians,  on  the  south  of  the  great  central  Asiatic  area ; 
while  the  testimony  of  all  European  antiquity  is  to  the 
effect  that,  before  and  since  the  period  in  question,  there 
lay  beyond  the  Danube,  the  Ehine,  and  the  Seine,  a  vast 
and  dangerous  yellow  or  red  haired,  fair- skinned,  blue- 
eyed  population.  Whether  the  disturbers  of  the  marches 
of  the  Eoman  Empire  were  called  Gauls  or  Germans, 
Goths,  Alans,  or  Scythians,  one  thing  seems  certain,  that 
until  the  invasion  of  the  Huns,  they  were  tall,  fair,  blue- 
eyed  men. 

If  any  one  should  think  fit  to  assume  that  in  the  year 
100  B.C.,  there  was  one  continuous  Xanthochroic  popula- 
tion from  the  Ehine  to  the  Yenisei,  and  from  the  Ural 
mountains  to  the  Hindoo  Koosh,  I  know  not  that  any 
evidence  exists  by  \vhich  that  position  could  be  upset, 
while  the  existing  state  of  things  is  rather  in  its  favour 
than  otherwise.  For  the  Scandinavians,  wholly,  the 
Germans  to  a  great  extent,  the  Slavonian  and  the 
Finnish  tribes,  some  of  the  inhabitants  of  Greece,  many 
Turks,  some  Kirghis,  and  some  Mantchous,  the  Ossetes  in 
the  Caucasus,  the  Siahposh,  the  Eohillas,  are  at  the 
present  day  fair,  yellow  or  red  haired,  and  blue-eyed  ; 
and  the  interpolation  of  tribes  of  Mongolian  hair  and 
complexion,  as  far  west  as  the  Caspian  Steppes  and  the 


vii.]  METHODS  AND  KESULTS  OF  ETENOL')GY.  151 

Crimea,  might  justly  be  accounted  for  by  those  subse- 
quent westward  irruptions  of  the  Mongolian  stock,  of 
which  history  furnishes  abundant  testimony. 

The  furthermost  limit  of  the  Xanthochroi  north-west- 
ward is  Iceland  and  the  British  Isles ;  south-westward, 
they  are  traceable  at  intervals  through  the  Berber  country, 
and  end  in  the  Canary  Islands. 

The  cranial  characters  of  the  Xanthochroi  are  not,  at  pre- 
sent, strictly  definable.  The  Scandinavians  are  certainly 
long-headed ;  but  many  Germans,  the  Swiss  so  far  as  they 
are  Germanized,  the  Slavonians,  the  Fins,  and  the  Turks, 
are  short-headed.  What  were  the  cranial  characters  of 
the  ancient  "  U-suns  "  and  "  Ting-lings  "  of  the  valley  of 
the  Yenisei  is  unknown. 

West  of  the  area  occupied  by  the  chief  mass  of  the 
Xanthochroi,  and  north  of  the  Sahara,  is  a  broad  belt  of 
land,  shaped  like  a  >-.  Between  the  forks  of  the  Y  lies 
the  Mediterranean ;  the  stem  of  it  is  Arabia.  The  stem 
is  bathed  by  the  Indian  Ocean,  the  western  ends  of  the 
forks  by  the  Atlantic.  The  people  inhabiting  the  area 
thus  roughly  sketched  have,  like  the  Xanthochroi,  pro- 
minent noses,  pale  skins  and  wavy  hair,  with  abundant 
beards ;  but,  unlike  them,  the  hair  is  black  or  dark,  and 
the  eyes  usually  so.  They  may  thence  be  called  the  MELA- 
NOCHROI.  Such  people  are  found  in  the  British  Islands, 
in  Western  and  Southern  Gaul,  in  Spain,  in  Italy  south 
of  the  Po,  in  parts  of  Greece,  in  Syria  and  Arabia, 
stretching  as  far  northward  and  eastward  as  the  Caucasus 
and  Persia.  They  are  the  chief  inhabitants  of  Africa 
north  of  the  Sahara,  and,  like  the  Xanthochroi,  they  end 
in  the  Canary  Islands.  They  are  known  as  Kelts,  Iberians, 
Etruscans,  Eomans,  Pelasgians,  Berbers,  Semites.  The 
majority  of  them  are  long-headed,  and  of  smaller  stature 
than  the  Xanthochroi. 

It  is  needless  to  remark  upon  the  civilization  of  these 


152  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vn. 

two  great  stocks.  With,  them  has  originated  everything 
that  is  highest  in  science,  in  art,  in  law,  in  politics, 
and  in  mechanical  inventions.  In  their  hands,  at  the 
present  moment,  lies  the  order  of  the  social  world,  and 
to  them  its  progress  is  committed. 

South  of  the  Atlas,  and  of  the  Great  Desert,  Middle 
Africa  exhibits  a  new  type  of  humanity  in  the  NEGRO, 
with  his  dark  skin,  woolly  hair,  projecting  jaws,  and  thick 
lips.  As  a  rule,  the  skull  of  the  Negro  is  remarkably 
long ;  it  rarely  approaches  the  broad  type,  and  never 
exhibits  the  roundness  of  the  Mongolian.  A  cultivator 
of  the  ground,  and  dwelling  in  villages;  a  maker  of 
pottery,  and  a  worker  in  the  useful  as  well  as  the  orna- 
mental metals  ;  employing  the  bow  and  arrow  as  well 
as  the  spear,  the  typical  negro  stands  high  in  point  of 
civilization  above  the  Australian. 

Resembling  the  Negroes  in  cranial  characters,  the 
BUSHMEN  of  South  Africa  differ  from  them  in  their 
yellowish  brown  skins,  their  tufted  hair,  their  remark- 
ably small  stature,  and  their  tendency  to  fatty  and 
other  integumentary  outgrowths ;  nor  is  the  wonderful 
click  with  which  their  speech  is  interspersed  to  be  over- 
looked in  enumerating  the  physical  characteristics  of 
this  strange  people. 

The  so-called  "  Drawidian  "  populations  of  Southern 
Hindostan  lead  us  back,  physically  as  well  as  geographi- 
cally, towards  the  Australians ;  while  the  diminutive 
MINCOPIES  of  the  Andaman  Islands  lie  midway  between 
the  Negro  and  Negrito  races,  and,  as  Mr.  Busk  has 
pointed  out,  occasionally  present  the  rare  combination 
of  Brachycephaly,  or  short-head edness,  with  woolly 
hair. 

In  the  preceding  progress  along  the  outskirts  of  the 
habitable  world,  eleven  readily  distinguishable  stocks,  or 
persistent  modifications,  of  mankind,  have  been  recog- 


vri.]  METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.  153 

nized.  I  Lave  purposely  omitted  such  people  as  the 
Abyssinians  and  the  Hindoos,  who  there  is  every  reason 
to  believe  result  from  the  intermixture  of  distinct  stocks. 
Perhaps  I  ought,  for  like  reasons,  to  have  ignored  the 
Mincopies.  But  I  do  not  pretend  that  my  enumeration 
is  complete  or,  in  any  sense,  perfect.  It  is  enough  for 
my  purpose  if  it  be  admitted  (and  I  think  it  cannot 
be  denied)  that  those  which  I  have  mentioned  exist, 
tire  well  marked,  and  occupy  the  greater  part  of  the 
habitable  globe. 

In  attempting  to  classify  these  persistent  modifications 
after  the  manner  of  naturalists,  the  first  circumstance 
that  attracts  one's  attention  is  the  broad  contrast  between 
the  people  with  straight  and  wavy  hair,  and  those  with 
crisp,  woolly,  or  tufted  hair.  Bory  de  St.  Vincent,  noting 
this  fundamental  distinction,  divided  mankind  accord- 
ingly into  the  two  primary  groups  of  Leiotrichi  and 
Ulotrichi, — terms  which  are  open  to  criticism,  but  which 
I  adopt  in  the  accompanying  table,  because  they  have 
been  used.  It  is  better  for  science  to  accept  a  faulty 
name  which  has  the  merit  of  existence,  than  to  burthen 
it  with  a  faultless  newly  invented  one. 

Under  each  of  these  divisions  are  two  columns,  one 
for  the  Brachycephali,  or  short  heads,  and  one  for  the 
Dolichocephali,1  or  long  heads.  Again,  each  column  is 
subdivided  transversely  into  four  compartments,  one  for 
the  "  leucous,"  people  with  fair  complexions  and  yellow 
or  red  hair ;  one  for  the  "  leucomeknous,"  with  dark  hair 
and  pale  skins  ;  one  for  the  "  xanthomelanous,"  with  black 
hair  and  yellow,  brown,  or  olive  skins  ;  and  one  for  the 
"  melanous,"  with  black  hair  and  dark  brown  or  blackish 
skins. 

i  Skulls,  the  transverse  diameter  of  which  is  more  than  eight-tenths  the 
long  diameter,  are  short ;  those  which  have  the  transverse  diameter  less  than 
eight-tenths  the  longitudinal,  are  long. 


154  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vn. 

LEIOTRICHI.  ULOTRICHI. 


Dolichocephali.    Brachycephali.     Dolichocephali.    Brachycephali. 
Leucous. 

....  Xanthochroi  .... 
Leucomelanous. 

....  Melanochroi  .... 
Xanthomelanous. 

Esquimaux.         Mongolians.  Bushmen. 

Amphinesians. 

Americans. 

Melanous.  , 

Australians.  Negroes.  Mincopiee  /?) 

Negritos. 

\*  TJie  names  of  tlie  stocks  known  only  since  the  fifteenth  centurfy 
are  put  into  italics.  If  the  "  Skrdlings "  of  the  Norse  discoveries  6 f 
America  were  Esquimaux,  Europeans  became  acquainted  with »:  t  > 
latter  six  or  seven  centuries  earlier.  r, 

It  is  curious  to  observe  that  almost  all  the  woolly-, 
headed  people  are  also  long-headed ;  while  among  the 
straight-haired  nations  broad  heads   preponderate,  and; 
only  two  stocks,  the  Esquimaux  and  the  Australians,  are' 
exclusively  long-headed. 

One  of  the  acutest  and  most  original  of  ethnologists, 
Desmoulins,  originated  the  idea,  which  has  subsequently 
been  fully  developed  by  Agassiz,  that  the  distribution 
of  the  persistent  modifications  of  man  is  governed  by 
the  same  laws  as  that  of  other  animals,  and  that  both 
fall  into  the  same  great  distributional  provinces.  Thus, 
Australia ;  America,  south  of  Mexico ;  the  Arctic  regions ; 
Europe,  Syria,  Arabia,  and  North  Africa,  taken  together, 
are  each  regions  eminently  characterized  by  the  nature 
of  their  animal  and  vegetable  populations,  and  each,  as 
we  have  seen,  has  its  peculiar  and  characteristic  form  of 
man.  But  it  may  be  doubted  whether  the  parallel  thus 
drawn  will  hold  good  strictly,  and  in  all  cases.  The 
Tasinanian  Fauna  and  Flora  are  essentially  Australian, 
and  the  like  is  true  to  a  less  extent  of  many,  if  not  of 


VIL]  METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.  155 

all,  the  Papuan  islands ;  but  the  Negritos  who  inhabit 
these  islands  are  strikingly  different  from  the  Austra- 
lians. Again,  the  differences  between  the  Mongolians 
and  the  Xanthochroi  are  out  of  all  proportion  greater 
than  those  between  the  Faunae  and  Florae  of  Central  and 
Eastern  Asia.  But  whatever  the  difficulties  in  the 
way  of  the  detailed  application  of  this  comparison  of 
the  distribution  of  men  with  that  of  animals,  it  is  well 
worthy  of  being  borne  in  mind,  and  carried  as  far  as  it 
will  go. 

Apart  from  all  speculation,  a  very  curious  fact  regard- 
ing the  distribution  of  the  persistent  modifications  of 
niiirJdnd  becomes  apparent  on  inspecting  an  Ethnolo- 
t  al  chart,  projected  in  such  a  manner  that  the  Pacific 
Ocean  occupies  its  centre.  Such  a  chart  exhibits  an 
Australian  area  occupied  by  dark  smooth-haired  people, 
separated  by  an  incomplete  inner  zone  of  dark  woolly- 
haired  Negritos  and  Negroes,  from  an  outer  zone  of  com- 
paratively pale  and  smooth-haired  men,  occupying  the 
Americas,  and  nearly  all  Asia  and  North  Africa. 

Such  is  a  brief  sketch  of  the  characters  and  distribu- 
tion of  the  persistent  modifications,  or  stocks,  of  man- 
kind at  the  present  day.  If  we  seek  for  direct  evidence 
of  how  long  this  state  of  things  has  lasted,  we  shall 
find  little  enough,  and  that  little  far  from  satisfactory. 
Of  the  eleven  different  stocks  enumerated,  seven  have 
been  known  to  us  for  less  than  400  years  ;  and  of  these 
seven  not  one  possessed  a  fragment  of  written  history  at 
the  time  it  came  into  contact  with  European  civilization. 
The  other  four — the  Negroes,  Mongolians,  Xanthochroi, 
and  Melanochroi — have  always  existed  in  some  of  the 
localities  in  which  they  are  now  found,  nor  do  the  negroes 
ever  seem  to  have  voluntarily  travelled  beyond  the  limits 
of  their  present  area.  But  ancient  history  is  in  a  great 
8 


156  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vn. 

measure  the  record  of  the  mutual  encroachments  of  the 
other  three  stocks. 

On  the  whole,  however,  it  is  wonderful  how  little 
change  has  been  effected  by  these  mutual  invasions  and 
intermixtures.  As  at  the  present  time,  so  at  the  dawn 
of  history,  the  Melanochroi  fringed  the  Atlantic  and 
the  Mediterranean ;  the  Xanthochroi  occupied  most  of 
Central  and  Eastern  Europe,  and  much  of  Western  and 
Central  Asia  ;  while  Mongolians  held  the  extreme  east  of 
the  Old  World.  So  far  as  history  teaches  us,  the  popu- 
lations of  Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa  were,  twenty  centuries 
ago,  just  what  they  are  now,  in  their  broad  features  and 
general  distribution. 

The  evidence  yielded  by  Archaeology  is  not  very 
definite,  but,  so  far  as  it  goes,  it  is  to  much  the  same 
effect.  The  mound  builders  of  Central  America  seem  to 
have  had  the  characteristic  short  and  broad  head  of  the 
modern  inhabitants  of  that  continent.  The  tumuli  and 
tombs  of  Ancient  Scandinavia,  of  pre-Koman  Britain,  of 
Gaul,  of  Switzerland,  reveal  two  types  of  skull — a  broad 
and  a  long — of  which,  in  Scandinavia,  the  broad  seems 
to  have  belonged  to  the  older  stock,  while  the  reverse 
was  probably  the  case  in  Britain,  and  certainly  in  Switz- 
erland. It  has  been  assumed  that  the  broad-skulled 
people  of  ancient  Scandinavia  were  Lapps ;  but  there 
is  no  proof  of  the  fact,  and  they  may  have  been,  like 
the  broad-skulled  Swiss  and  Germans,  Xanthochroi. 
One  of  the  greatest  of  ethnological  difficulties  is  to 
know  where  the  modern  Swedes,  Norsemen,  and  Saxons 
got  their  long  heads,  as  all  their  neighbours,  Fins,  Lapps, 
Slavonians,  and  South  Germans,  are  broad-headed. 
Again,  who  were  the  small-handed,  long-headed  people 
of  the  "  bronze  epoch,"  and  what  has  become  of  the 
infusion  of  their  blood  among  the  Xanthochroi  ? 

At  present  Palaeontology  yields  no  safe  data  to  the 


vii.]  METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.  157 

ethnologist.  We  know  absolutely  nothing  of  the  ethno- 
logical characters  of  the  men  of  Abbeville  and  Hoxne  ; 
but  must  be  content  with  the  demonstration,  in  itself  of 
immense  value,  that  Man  existed  in  Western  Europe 
when  its  physical  condition  was  widely  different  from 
what  it  is  now,  and  when  animals  existed,  which,  though 
they  belong  to  what  is,  properly  speaking,  the  present 
order  of  things,  have  long  been  extinct.  Beyond  the 
limits  of  a  fraction  of  Europe,  Palaeontology  tells  us 
nothing  of  man  or  of  his  works. 

To  sum  up  our  knowledge  of  the  ethnological  past 
of  man :  so  far  as  the  light  is  bright,  it  shows  him 
substantially  as  he  is  now ;  and,  when  it  grows  dim,  it 
permits  us  to  see  no  sign  that  he  was  other  than  he 
is  now. 

It  is  a  general  belief  that  men  of  different  stocks 
differ  as  much  physiologically  as  they  do  morphologically ; 
but  it  is  very  hard  to  prove,  in  any  particular  case,  how 
much  of  a  supposed  national  characteristic  is  due  to 
inherent  physiological  peculiarities,  and  how  much  to 
the  influence  of  circumstances.  There  is  much  evidence 
to  show,  however,  that  some  stocks  enjoy  a  partial  or 
complete  immunity  from  diseases  which  destroy,  or 
decimate,  others.  Thus  there  seems  good  ground  for 
the  belief  that  Negroes  are  remarkably  exempt  from 
yellow  fever ;  and  that,  among  Europeans,  the  melano- 
chrous  people  are  less  obnoxious  to  its  ravages  than  the 
xanthochrous.  But  many  writers,  not  content  with 
physiological  differences  of  this  kind,  undertake  to  prove 
the  existence  of  others  of  far  greater  moment ;  and, 
indeed,  to  show  that  certain  stocks  of  mankind  exhibit, 
more  or  less  distinctly,  the  physiological  characters  of 
true  species.  Unions  between  these  stocks,  and  still 
more  between  the  half-breeds  arising  from  their  mixture, 
are  affirmed  to  be  either  infertile,  or  less  fertile  than  those 


158  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vn. 

which  take  place  between  males  and  females  of  either 
stock  under  the  same  circumstances.  Some  go  so  far  as 
to  assert  that  no  mixed  breeds  of  mankind  can  maintain 
themselves  without  the  assistance  of  one  or  other  of  the 
parent  stocks,  and  that,  consequently,  they  must  inevit- 
ably be  obliterated  in  the  long  run. 

Here,  again,  it  is  exceedingly  difficult  to  obtain  trust- 
worthy evidence,  and  to  free  the  effects  of  the  pure 
physiological  experiment  from  adventitious  influences. 
The  only  trial  which,  by  a  strange  chance,  was  kept  clear 
of  all  such  influences — the  only  instance  in  which  two 
distinct  stocks  of  mankind  were  crossed,  and  their  progeny 
intermarried  without  any  admixture  from  without — is 
the  famous  case  of  the  Pitcairn  Islanders,  who  were  the 
progeny  of  Bligh's  English  sailors  by  Tahitian  women. 
The  results  of  this  experiment,  as  everybody  knows,  are 
dead  against  those  who  maintain  the  doctrine  of  human 
hybridity,  seeing  that  the  Pitcairn  Islanders,  even  though 
they  necessarily  contracted  consanguineous  marriages, 
throve  and  multiplied  exceedingly. 

But  those  who  are  disposed  to  believe  in  this  doctrine 
should  study  the  evidence  brought  forward  in  its  support 
by  M.  Broca,  its  latest  and  ablest  advocate,  and  compare 
this  evidence  with  that  which  the  botanists,  as  repre- 
sented by  a  Gaertner,  or  by  a  Darwin,  think  it  indispen- 
sable to  obtain  before  they  will  admit  the  infertility  of 
crosses  between  two  allied  kinds  of  plants.  They  will 
then,  I  think,  be  satisfied  that  the  doctrine  in  question 
rests  upon  a  very  unsafe  foundation ;  that  the  facts 
adduced  in  its  support  are  capable  of  many  other  inter- 
pretations ;  and,  indeed,  that  from  the  very  nature  of 
the  case,  demonstrative  evidence  one  way  or  the  other 
is  almost  unattainable.  A  priori,  I  should  be  disposed 
to  expect  a  certain  amount  of  infertility  between  some  of 
the  extreme  modifications  of  mankind;  and  still  more 


vn.]  METHODS  AND  RESULTS 

between,  the  offsprings  of  their  intermixture:^  'A poste- 
riori, I  cannot  discover  any  satisfactory  proof  that  such 
infertility  exists. 

From  the  facts  of  ethnology  I  now  turn  to  the  theories 
and  speculations  of  ethnologists,  which  have  been  devised 
to  explain  these  facts,  and  to  furnish  satisfactory  answers 
to  the  inquiry — what  conditions  have  determined  the 
existence  of  the  persistent  modifications  of  mankind, 
and  have  caused  their  distribution  to  be  what  it  is  ? 

These  speculations  may  be  grouped  under  three  heads: 
firstly,  the  Monogenist  hypotheses ;  secondly,  those  of 
the  Polygenists  ;  and  thirdly,  that  which  would  result 
from  a  simple  application  of  Darwinian  principles  to 
mankind. 

According  to  the  Monogenists,  all  mankind  have  sprung 
from  a  single  pair,  whose  multitudinous  progeny  spread 
themselves  over  the  world,  such  as  it  now  is,  and  became 
modified  into  the  forms  we  meet  with  in  the  various 
regions  of  the  earth,  by  the  effect  of  the  climatal  and 
other  conditions  to  which  they  were  subjected. 

The  advocates  of  this  hypothesis  are  divisible  into 
several  schools.  There  are  those  who  represent  the  most 
numerous,  respectable,  and  would-be  orthodox  of  the 
public,  and  are  what  may  be  called  "  Adamites,"  pure  and 
simple.  They  believe  that  Adam  was  made  out  of  earth 
somewhere  in  Asia,  about  six  thousand  years  ago  ;  that 
Eve  was  modelled  from  one  of  his  ribs  ;  and  that  the 
progeny  of  these  two  having  been  reduced  to  the  eight 
persons  who  were  landed  on  the  summit  of  Mount 
Ararat  after  an  universal  deluge,  all  the  nations  of  the 
earth  have  proceeded  from  these  last,  have  migrated  to 
their  present  localities,  and  have  become  converted  into 
Negroes,  Australians,  Mongolians,  &c.,  within  that  time. 
Five-sixths  of  the  public  are  taught  this  Adamitic  Mono- 
genism,  as  if  it  were  an  established  truth,  and  believe  it. 


160  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vn. 

I  do  not ;  and  I  am  not  acquainted  with  any  man  of 
science,  or  duly  instructed  person,  who  does. 

A  second  school  of  monogenists,  not  worthy  of  much 
attention,  attempts  to  hold  a  place  midway  between  the 
Adamites  and  a  third  division,  who  take  up  a  purely 
scientific  position,  and  require  to  be  dealt  with  accord- 
ingly. This  third  division,  in  fact,  numbers  in  its  ranks 
Linnseus,  Buffon,  Blumenbach,  Cuvier,  Prichard,  and 
many  distinguished  living  ethnologists. 

These  "Bational  Monogenists,"  or,  at  any  rate,  the 
more  modern  among  them,  hold,  firstly,  that  the  present 
condition  of  the  earth  has  existed  for  untold  ages  ; 
secondly,  that,  at  a  remote  period,  beyond  the  ken  of 
Archbishop  Usher,  man  was  created,  somewhere  between 
the  Caucasus  and  the  Hindoo  Koosh  ;  thirdly,  that  he 
might  have  migrated  thence  to  all  parts  of  the  inhabited 
world,  seeing  that  none  of  them  are  unattainable  from 
some  other  inhabited  part,  by  men  provided  with  only 
such  means  of  transport  as  savages  are  known  to  possess 
and  must  have  invented  ;  fourthly,  that  the  operation  of 
the  existing  diversities  of  climate  and  other  conditions 
upon  people  so  migrating,  is  sufficient  to  account  for  all 
the  diversities  of  mankind. 

Of  the  truth  of  the  first  of  these  propositions  no  com- 
petent judge  now  entertains  any  doubt.  The  second  is 
more  open  to  discussion,  for  in  these  latter  days  many 
question  the  special  creation  of  man  :  and  even  if  his 
special  creation  be  granted,  there  is  not  a  shadow  of  a 
reason  why  he  should  have  been  created  in  Asia  rather 
than  anywhere  else.  Of  all  the  odd  myths  that  have 
arisen  in  the  scientific  world,  the  "  Caucasian  mystery," 
invented  quite  innocently  by  Blumenbach,  is  the  oddest. 
A  Georgian  woman's  skull  was  the  handsomest  in  his 
collection.  Hence  it  became  his  model  exemplar  of 
human  skulls,  from  which  all  others  might  be  regarded  as 


viz.]  METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.  161 

deviations  ;  and  out  of  this,  by  some  strange  intellectual 
hocus-pocus,  grew  up  the  notion  that  the  Caucasian  man 
is  the  prototypic  "Adamic"  man,  and  his  country  the 
primitive  centre  of  our  kind.  Perhaps  the  most  curious 
thing  of  all  is,  that  the  said  Georgian  skull,  after  all,  is 
not  a  skull  of  average  form,  but  distinctly  belongs  to  the 
brachycephalic  group. 

With  the  third  proposition  I  am  quite  disposed  to 
agree,  though  it  must  be  recollected  that  it  is  one  thing 
to  allow  that  a  given  migration  is  possible,  and  another 
to  admit  there  is  good  reason  to  believe  it  has  really 
taken  place. 

But  I  can  find  no  sufficient  ground  for  accepting  the 
fourth  proposition ;  and  I  doubt  if  it  would  ever  have 
obtained  its  general  currency  except  for  the  circumstance 
that  fair  Europeans  are  very  readily  tanned  and  em- 
browned by  the  sun.  But  I  am  not  aware  that  there 
is  a  particle  of  proof  that  the  cutaneous  change  thus 
effected  can  become  hereditary,  any  more  than  that  the 
enlarged  livers,  which  plague  our  countrymen  in  India, 
can  be  transmitted ; — while  there  is  very  strong  evidence 
to  the  contrary.  Not  only,  in  fact,  are  there  such  cases 
as  those  of  the  English  families  in  Barbadoes,  who  have 
remained  for  six  generations  unaltered  in  complexion,  but 
which  are  open  to  the  objection  that  they  may  have 
received  infusions  of  fresh  European  blood ;  but  there  is 
the  broad  fact,  that  not  a  single  indigenous  Negro  exists 
either  in  the  great  alluvial  plains  of  tropical  South 
America,  or  in  the  exposed  islands  of  the  Polynesian 
Archipelago,  or  among  the  populations  of  equatorial 
Borneo  or  Sumatra.  No  satisfactory  explanation  of 
these  obvious  difficulties  has  been  offered  by  the  advo- 
cates of  the  direct  influence  of  conditions.  And  as  for 
the  more  important  modifications  observed  in  the  struc- 
ture of  the  brain,  and  in  the  form  of  the  skull,  no  one 


162  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vii. 

lias  ever  pretended  to  show  in  what  way  they  can  be 
effected  directly  by  climate. 

It  is  here,  in  fact,  that  the  strength  of  the  Polygenists, 
or  those  who  maintain  that  men  primitively  arose,  not 
from  one,  but  from  many  stocks,  lies.  Show  us,  they 
say  to  the  Monogenists,  a  single  case  in  which  the  cha- 
racters of  a  human  stock  have  been  essentially  modi- 
fied without  its  being  demonstrable,  or,  at  least,  highly 
probable,  that  there  has  been  intermixture  of  blood 
with  some  foreign  stock.  Bring  forward  any  instance 
in  which  a  part  of  the  world,  formerly  inhabited  by  one 
stock,  is  now  the  dwelling-place  of  another,  and  we 
will  prove  the  change  to  be  the  result  of  migration, 
or  of  intermixture,  and  not  of  modification  of  character 
by  climatic  influences.  Finally,  prove  to  us  that  the 
evidence  in  favour  of  the  specific  distinctness  of  many 
animals,  admitted  to  be  distinct  species  by  all  zoologists, 
is  a  whit  better  than  that  upon  which  we  maintain  the 
specific  distinctness  of  men. 

If  presenting  unanswerable  objections  to  your  adver- 
sary were  the  same  thing  as  proving  your  own  case,  the 
Polygenists  would  be  in  a  fair  way  towards  victory ;  but, 
unfortunately,  as  I  have  already  observed,  they  have 
as  yet  completely  failed  to  adduce  satisfactory  positive 
proof  of  the  specific  diversity  of  mankind.  Like  the 
Monogenists,  the  Polygenists  are  of  several  sects ;  some 
imagine  that  their  assumed  species  of  mankind  were 
created  where  we  find  them — the  African  in  Africa,  and 
the  Australian  in  Australia,  along  with  the  other  animals 
of  their  distributional  province  ;  others  conceive  that  each 
species  of  man  has  resulted  from  the  modification  of  some 
antecedent  species  of  ape — the  American  from  the  broad- 
nosed  Simians  of  the  New  World,  the  African  from 
the  Troglodytic  stock,  the  Mongolian  from  the  Orangs. 

The   first   hypothesis  is  hardly  likely  to  win  much 


vn.j  METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.  1C3 

favour.  The  whole  tendency  of  modern  science  is  to 
thrust  the  origination  of  things  further  and  further  into 
the  background ;  and  the  chief  philosophical  objection  to 
z\dam  being,  not  his  oneness,  but  the  hypothesis  of  his 
special  creation;  the  multiplication  of  that  objection 
tenfold  is,  whatever  it  may  look,  an  increase,  instead  of 
a  diminution,  of  the  difficulties  of  the  case.  And,  as  to 
the  second  alternative,  it  may  safely  be  affirmed  that, 
even  if  the  differences  between  men  are  specific,  they 
are  so  small,  that  the  assumption  of  more  than  one 
primitive  stock  for  all  is  altogether  superfluous.  Surely 
no  one  can  now  be  found  to  assert  that  any  two  stocks 
of  mankind  differ  as  much  as  a  chimpanzee  and  an 
orang  do ;  still  less  that  they  are  as  unlike  as  either 
of  these  is  to  any  New  World  Simian  ! 

Lastly,  the  granting  of  the  Polygenist  premises  does 
not,  in  the  slightest  degree,  necessitate  the  Polygenist 
conclusion.  Admit  that  Negroes  and  Australians,  Ne- 
gritos and  Mongols  are  distinct  species,  or  distinct  genera, 
if  you  will,  and  you  may  yet,  with  perfect  consistency, 
be  the  strictest  of  Monogenists,  and  even  believe  in  Adam 
and  Eve  as  the  primaeval  parents  of  all  mankind. 

It  is  to  Mr.  Darwin  we  owe  this  discovery  :  it  is  he 
who,  coming  forward  in  the  guise  of  an  eclectic  philoso- 
pher, presents  his  doctrine  as  the  key  to  ethnology,  and 
as  reconciling  and  combining  all  that  is  good  in  the 
Monogenistic  and  Polygenistic  schools. 

It  is  true  that  Mr.  Darwin  has  not,  in  so  many  words, 
applied  his  views  to  ethnology  ;  but  even  he  who  "  runs 
and  reads"  the  "  Origin  of  Species"  can  hardly  fail  to  do 
so ;  and,  furthermore,  Mr.  Wallace  and  M.  Pouchet  have 
recently  treated  of  ethnological  questions  from  this  point 
of  view.  Let  me,  in  conclusion,  add  my  own  contribution 
to  the  same  store. 

I  assume  Man  to  have  arisen  in  the  manner  which  I 


164  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vii. 

have  discussed  elsewhere,  and  probably,  though  by  no 
means  necessarily,  in  one  locality.  Whether  he  arose 
singly,  or  a  number  of  examples  appeared  contempo- 
raneously, is  also  an  open  question  for  the  believer  in  the 
production  of  species  by  the  gradual  modification  of  pre- 
existing ones.  At  what  epoch  of  the  world's  history  this 
took  place,  again,  we  have  no  evidence  whatever.  It 
may  have  been  in  the  older  tertiary,  or  earlier,  but  what 
is  most  important  to  remember  is,  that  the  discoveries 
of  late  years  have  proved  that  man  inhabited  "Western 
Europe,  at  any  rate,  before  the  occurrence  of  those  great 
physical  changes  which  have  given  Europe  its  present 
aspect.  And  as  the  same  evidence  shows  that  man  was 
the  contemporary  of  animals  which  are  now  extinct,  it  is 
not  too  much  to  assume  that  his  existence  dates  back  at 
least  as  far  as  that  of  our  present  Fauna  and  Flora,  or 
before  the  epoch  of  the  drift. 

But  if  this  be  true,  it  is  somewhat  startling  to  reflect 
upon  the  prodigious  changes  which  have  taken  place  in 
the  physical  geography  of  this  planet  since  man  has  been 
an  occupant  of  it. 

During  that  period  the  greater  part  of  the  British 
islands,  of  Central  Europe,  of  Northern  Asia,  have  been 
submerged  beneath  the  sea  and  raised  up  again.  So  has 
the  great  desert  of  Sahara,  which  occupies  the  major  part 
of  Northern  Africa.  The  Caspian  and  the  Aral  seas  have 
been  one,  and  their  united  waters  have  probably  com- 
municated with  both  the  Arctic  and  the  Mediterranean 
oceans.  The  greater  part  of  North  America  has  been 
under  water,  and  has  emerged.  It  is  highly  probable 
that  a  large  part  of  the  Malayan  Archipelago  has 
sunk,  and  its  primitive  continuity  with  Asia  has  been 
destroyed.  Over  the  great  Polynesian  area  subsidence 
has  taken  place  to  the  extent  of  many  thousands  of 
feet — subsidence  of  so  vast  a  character,  in  fact,  that 


vii.]  METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.  165 

if  a  continent  like  Asia  had  once  occupied  the  area  of 
the  Pacific,  the  peaks  of  its  mountains  would  now  show 
not  more  numerous  than  the  islands  of  the  Polynesian 
Archipelago. 

What  lands  may  have  been  thickly  populated  for 
untold  ages,  and  subsequently  have  disappeared  and 
left  no  sign  above  the  waters,  it  is  of  course  impossible 
for  us  to  say ;  but  unless  we  are  to  make  the  wholly 
unjustifiable  assumption  that  no  dry  land  rose  elsewhere 
when  our  present  dry  land  sank,  there  must  be  half-a- 
dozen  Atlantises  beneath  the  waves  of  the  various  oceans 
of  the  world.  But  if  the  regions  which  have  undergone 
these  slow  and  gradual,  but  immense  alterations,  were 
wholly  or  in  part  inhabited  before  the  changes  I  have 
indicated  began — and  it  is  more  probable  that  they 
were,  than  that  they  were  not — what'  a  wonderfulty 
efficient  "  Emigration  Board "  must  have  been  at  work 
all  over  the  world  long  before  canoes,  or  even  rafts,  were 
invented  ;  and  before  men  were  impelled  to  wander  by 
any  desire  nobler  or  stronger  than  hunger.  And  as 
these  rude  and  primitive  families  were  thrust,  in  the 
course  of  long  series  of  generations,  from  land  to  land, 
impelled  by  encroachments  of  sea  or  of  marsh,  or  by 
severity  of  summer  heat  or  winter  cold,  to  change  their 
positions,  what  opportunities  must  have  been  offered  for 
the  play  of  natural  selection,  in  preserving  one  family 
variation  and  destroying  another ! 

Suppose,  for  example,  that  some  families  of  a  horde 
which  had  reached  a  land  charged  with  the  seeds  of 
yellow  fever,  varied  in  the  direction  of  woolliness  of 
hair  and  darkness  of  skin.  Then,  if  it  be  true  that 
these  physical  characters  are  accompanied  by  compara- 
tive or  absolute  exemptions  from  that  scourge,  the 
inevitable  tendency  would  be  to  the  preservation  and 
multiplication  of  the  darker  and  woollier  families,  and 


166  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vn. 

the  elimination  of  the  whiter  and  smoother-haired.  In 
fact,  by  the  operation  of  causes  precisely  similar  to  those 
which,  in  the  famous  instance  cited  by  Mr.  Darwin, 
have  given  rise  to  a  race  of  black  pigs  in  the  forests 
of  Louisiana,  a  negro  stock  would  eventually  people 
the  region. 

Again,  how  often,  by  such  physical  changes,  must  a 
stock  have  been  isolated  from  all  others  for  innumerable 
generations,  and  have  found  ample  time  for  the  hereditary 
hardening  of  its  special  peculiarities  into  the  enduring 
characters  of  a  persistent  modification. 

Nor,  if  it  be  true  that  the  physiological  difference  of 
species  may  be  produced  by  variation  and  natural  selec- 
tion, as  Mr.  Darwin  supposes,  would  it  be  at  all  astonish- 
ing if,  in  some  of  these  separated  stocks,  the  process  of 
differentiation  should  have  gone  so  far  as  to  give  rise  to 
the  phenomena  of  hybridity.  In  the  face  of  the  over- 
whelming evidence  in  favour  of  the  unity  of  the  origin 
of  mankind  afforded  by  anatomical  considerations,  satis- 
factory proof  of  the  existence  of  any  degree  of  sterility 
in  the  unions  of  members  of  two  of  the  "persistent 
modifications "  of  mankind,  might  well  be  appealed  to 
by  Mr.  Darwin  as  crucial  evidence  of  the  truth  of  his 
views  regarding  the  origin  of  species  in  general. 


VIII. 

ON   SOME  FIXED  POINTS   IN  BEITISH 
ETHNOLOGY. 


IN  view  of  the  many  discussions  to  which  the  compli- 
cated problems  offered  by  the  ethnology  of  the  British 
Islands  have  given  rise,  it  may  be  useful  to  attempt  to 
pick  out,  from  amidst  the  confused  masses  of  assertion 
and  of  inference,  those  propositions  which  appear  to  rest 
upon  a  secure  foundation,  and  to  state  the  evidence  by 
which  they  are  supported.  Such  is  the  purpose  of  the 
present  paper. 

Some  of  these  well-based  propositions  relate  to  the 
physical  characters  of  the  people  of  Britain  and  their 
neighbours  ;  while  others  concern  the  languages  which 
they  spoke.  I  shall  deal,  in  the  first  place,  with  the 
physical  questions. 

I.    Eighteen  hundred   years   ago   the  population   of 

Britain  comprised  people  of  two  types  of  complexion 

—the  one  fair,  and  the  other  dark.     The  dark  people 

resembled   the   Aquitani   and   the   Iberians;    the  fair 

people  were  like  the  Belgic  Gauls. 

The  chief  direct  evidence  of  the  truth  of  this  proposi- 
tion is  the  well-known  passage  of  Tacitus  : — 

"  Ceterum  Britanniam  qui  mortales  initio  coluerint,  indigense  an 
advecti,  ut  inter  barbaros,  parum  cornpertum.  Habitus  corporum 


168  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vin. 

varii :  atque  ex  eo  arguraenta  :  nam  rutilse  Caledoniara  habi-tantium 
comae,  magni  artus  Germanicam  originem  asseverant.  Silurura  colorati 
vultus  et  torti  plerumque  crines,  et  posita  contra  Hispaniam,  Iberos 
veteres  trajecisse,  casque  sedes  occupasse,  fidem  faciunt.  Proximi 
Gallis  et  similes  sunt ;  seu  durante  originis  vi,  seu  procurrentibus  in 
diversa  terris,  positio  cceli  corporibus  babitum  dedit.  In  universum 
tamen  restiman-ti,  Gallos  vicinum  solum  occupasse,  credibile  est ;  eorum 
sacra  deprehendas,  superstitionum  persuasione  ;  sermo  baud  multum 
diversus." 1 

This  passage,  it  will  be  observed,  contains  statements 
as  to  facts,  and  certain  conclusions  deduced  from  these 
facts.  The  matters  of  fact  asserted  are  :  firstly,  that  the 
inhabitants  of  Britain  exhibit  much  diversity  in  their 
physical  characters ;  secondly,  that  the  Caledonians  are 
red-haired  and  large-limbed,  like  the  Germans ;  thirdly, 
that  the  Silures  have  curly  hair  and  dark  complexions, 
like  the  people  of  Spain ;  fourthly,  that  the  British 
people  nearest  Gaul  resemble  the  "  Galli." 

Tacitus,  therefore,  states  positively  what  the  Caledo- 
nians and  Silures  were  like  ;  but  the  interpretation  of 
what  he  says  about  the  other  Britons  must  depend  upon 
what  we  learn  from  other  sources  as  to  the  characters  of 
these  "  Galli."  Here  the  testimony  of  "  divus  Julius  " 
comes  in  with  great  force  and  appropriateness.  Csesar 
writes  : — 

"  Britannia  pars  interior  ab  iis  incolitur,  quos  natos  in  insula  ipsi 
memoria  proditum  dicunt :  marituma  pars  ab  iis,  qui  predgo  ac  belli 
inferendi  causa  ex  Belgio  trausierant ;  qui  omnes  fere  iis  nominibus 
civitatum  appellantur  quibus  orti  ex  civitatibus  eo  pervenerunt,  et 
bello  inlato  ibi  permanserunt  atque  agros  colere  coeperunt."2 

From  these  passages  it  is  obvious  that  in  the  opinion 
of  Caesar  and  Tacitus,  the  southern  Britons  resembled 
the  northern  Gauls,  and .  especially  the  Belgse  ;  and  the 
evidence  of  Strabo  is  decisive  as  to  the  characters  in 
which  the  two  people  resembled  one  another :  "The  men 

1  Taciti  Agricola,  c.  11.  2  De  Bello  Gallico,  v.  12. 


viii.]  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  169 

[of  Britain]  are  taller  than  the  Kelts,  with  hair  less 
yellow  ;  they  are  slighter  in  their  persons." l 

The  evidence  adduced  appears  to  leave  no  reasonable 
ground  for  doubting  that,  at  the  time  of  the  Eoman 
conquest,  Britain  contained  people  of  two  types,  the  one 
dark- and  the  other  fair  complexioned,  and  that  there  was 
a  certain  difference  between  the  latter •  in  the  north  and 
in  the  south  of  Britain  :  the  northern  folk  being,  in  the 
judgment  of  Tacitus,  or,  more  properly,  according  to  the 
information  he  had  received  from  Agricola  and  others, 
more  similar  to  the  Germans  .than  the  latter.  As  to  the 
distribution  of  these  stocks,  all  that  is  clear  is,  that  the 
dark  people. were  predominant  in  certain  parts  of  the 
west  of  the  southern  half  of  Britain,  while  the  fair  stock 
appears  to  have  furnished  the  chief  elements  of  the 
population  elsewhere. 

No  ancient  writer  troubled  himself  with  measuring 
skulls,  and  therefore  there  is  no  direct  evidence  as  to  the 
cranial  characters  of  the  fair  and  the  dark  stocks.  The 
indirect  evidence  is  not  very  satisfactory.  The  tumuli  of 
Britain  of  pre-Koman  date  have  yielded  two  extremely 
different  forms  of  skull,  the  one  broad-  and  the  other  long ; 
and  the  same  variety  has  been  observed  in  the  skulls  of 
the  ancient  Gauls.2  The  suggestion  is  obvious  that  the 
one  form  of  skull  may  have  been  associated  with  the  fair, 
and  the  other  with  the  dark,  complexion.  But  any  con- 
clusion of  this  kind  is  at  once  checked- by  the  reflection 
that  the  extremes  of  long  and  short-headedness  are  to 
be  met  with  among  the  fair  inhabitants  of  Germany  and 
of  Scandinavia  at  the  present  day — the  south-western 
Germans  and  the  Swiss  being  markedly  broad-headed, 

1  "The  Geography  of  Strabo."     Translated  by  Hamilton  and  Falconer: 
v.  5. 

2  See  Dr.  Thurnam  "  On  the  T\vo  principal  Forms  of  Ancient  British  and 
Gaulish  Skulls." 


170  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vm. 

while   the   Scandinavians    are   as   predominantly   long- 
headed. 

What  the  natives  of  Ireland  were  like  at  the  time  of 
the  Roman  conquest  of  Britain,  and  for  centuries  after- 
wards, we  have  no  certain  knowledge ;  but  the  earliest 
trustworthy  records  prove  the  existence,  side  by  side  with 
one  another,  of  a  fair  and  a  dark  stock,  in  Ireland  as  in 
Britain.  The  long  form  of  skull  is  predominant  among 
the  ancient,  as  among  modern,  Irish. 

II.  The  people  termed  Gauls,  and  those  called  Germans, 
by  the  Romans,  did  not  differ  in  any  important  %)hysical 
character. 

The  terms  in  which  the  ancient  writers  describe  both 
Gauls  and  Germans  are  identical.  They  are  always  tall 
people,  with  massive  limbs,  fair  skins,  fierce  blue  eyes, 
and  hair  the  colour  of  which  ranges  from  red  to  yellow. 
Zeuss,  the  great  authority  on  these  matters,  affirms 
broadly  that  no  distinction  in  bodily  feature  is  to  be 
found  between  the  Gauls,  the  Germans,  and  the  Wends, 
so  far  as  their  characters  are  recorded  by  the  old  histo- 
rians ;  and  he  proves  his  case  by  citations  from  a  cloud 
of  witnesses. 

An  attempt  has  been  made  to  show  that  the  colour  of 
the  hair  of  the  Gauls  must  have  differed  very  much  from 
that  which  obtained  among  the  Germans,  on  the  strength 
of  the  story  told  by  Suetonius  (Caligula,  4),  that  Caligula 
tried  to  pass  off  Gauls  for  Germans  by  picking  out 
the  tallest,  and  making  them  "  rutilare  et  summittere 


comam." 


The  Baron  de  Belloguet  remarks  upon  this  passage  : — 

"  It  was  in  the  very  north  of  Gaul,  and  near  the  sea,  that  Caligula 
got  up  this  military  comedy.  And  the  fact  proves  that  the  Belgre 
were  already  sensibly  different  from  their  ancestors,  whom  Strabo  had 
found  almost  identical  with  their  brothers  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Khine." 


VIIL]  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  171 

But  the  fact  recorded  by  Suetonius,  if  fact  it  be,  proves 
nothing  ;  for  the  Germans  themselves  were  in  the  habit  of 
reddening  their  hair.  Ammianus  Marcellinus1  tells  how, 
in  the  year  367  A.D.,  the  Eoman  commander,  Jovinus, 
surprised  a  body  of  Alemanni  near  the  town  now  called 
Charpeigne,  in  the  valley  of  the  Moselle ;  and  how  the 
Eoman  soldiers,  as,  concealed  by  the  thick  wood,  they 
stole  upon  their  unsuspecting  enemies,  saw  that  some 
were  bathing  and  others  "comas  mtilantes  -ex  more/' 
More  than  two  centuries  earlier  Pliny  gives  indirect 
evidence  to  the  same  effect  when  he  says  of  soap  : — 

"  Galliarum  hoc  inventum  rutilandis  capillis  .  .  .  apud  Germanos 
majore  in  usu  viris  quara  fceniinis."2 

Here  we  have  a  writer  who  flourished  only  a  short  time 
after  the  date  of  the  Caligula  story,  telling  us  that  the 
Gauls  invented  soap  for  the  purpose  of  doing  that  which, 
according  to  Suetonius,  Caligula  forced  them  to  do. 
And,  further,  the  combined  and  independent  testimony 
of  Pliny  and  Ammianus  assures  us  that  the  Germans 
were  as  much  in  the  habit  of  reddening  their  hair  as 
the  Gauls.  As  to  De  Belloguet's  supposition  that,  even 
in  Caligula's  time,  the  Gauls  had  become  darker  than 
their  ancestors  were,  it  is  directly  contradicted  by 
Ammianus  Marcellinus,  who  knew  the  Gauls  well. 
"  Celsioris  staturse  et  candidi  pcene  Galli  sunt  omnes,  et 
rutili,  luminumque  torvitate  terribiles,"  is  his  description; 
and  it  would  fit  the  Gauls  who  sacked  Eome. 

III.  In  none  of  the  invasions  of  Britain  which  have 
taken  place  since  the  Roman  dominion,  has  any  other 
type  of  man  been  introduced  than  one  or  other  of  the 
two  which  existed  during  that  dominion. 

The  North  Germans,  who  effected  what  is  commonly 
called  the  Saxon  conquest  of  Britain,  were,  most 

1  Res  Gestae,  xxvii.  2  Historia  Naturalis,  xxviii.  51. 


172  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vm 

assuredly,  a  fair,  yellow,  or  red-haired,  blue  eyed,  long- 
skulled  people.  So  were  the  Danes  and  the  Norsemen 
who  followed  them;  though  it  is  very  possible  that  the 
active  slave  trade  which  went  on,  and  the  intercourse  with 
Ireland,  may  have  introduced  a  certain  admixture  of  the 
dark  stock  into  both  Denmark  and  Norway.  The  Nor- 
man conquest  brought  in  new  ethnological  elements,  the 
precise  value  of  which  cannot  be  estimated  with  exact- 
ness ;  but  as  to  their  quality,  there  can  be  no  question, 
inasmuch  as  even  the  wide  area  from  which  William 
drew  his  followers  could  yield  him  nothing  but  the  fair 
and  the  dark  types  of  men,  already  present  in  Britain. 
But  whether  the  Norman  settlers,  on  the  whole,  strength- 
ened the  fair  or  the  dark  element,  is  a  problem,  the 
elements  of  the  solution  of  which  are  not-  attainable. 

I  am  unable  to  discover  any  grounds  for  believing  that 
a  Lapp  element  has  ever  entered  into  the  population  of 
these  islands.  So  far  as  the  physical  evidence  goes,  it  is 
perfectly  consistent  with  the  hypothesis  that  the  only 
constituent  stocks  of  that  population,  now,  or  at  any 
other  period  about  which  we  have  evidence,  are  the  dark 
whites,  whom  I  have  proposed  to  call  "Melanochroi" 
and  the  fair  whites,  or  "  Xanthochroi" 

IV.  The  Xanthochroi  and  the  Melanochroi  of  Britain 
are,  speaking  broadly,  distributed,  at  present,  as  they 
were  in  the  time  of  Tacitus ;  and  their  representatives 
on  the  continent  of  Europe  have  the  same  general  dis- 
tribution as  at  the  earliest  period  of  which  we  have  any 
record. 

At  the  present  day,  and  notwithstanding  the  extensive 
intermixture  effected  by  the  movements  consequent  on 
civilization  and  on  political  changes,  there  is  a  predomi- 
nance of  dark  men  in  the  west,  and  of  fair  men  in  the 
east  and  north,  of  Britain.  At  the  present  day,  as  from 
the  earliest  times,  the  predominant  constituents  of  the 


viu.]  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  173 

riverain  population  of  the  North  Sea  and  the  eastern  half 
of  the  British  Channel,  are  fair  men.  The  fair  stock 
continues  in  force  through  Central  Europe,  until  it  is 
lost  in  Central  Asia.  Offshoots  of  this  stock  extend 
into  Spain,  Italy,  and  Northern  India,  and  by  way  of 
Syria  and  North  Africa,  to  the  Canary  Islands.  They 
were  known  in  very  early  times  to  the  Chinese,  and  in 
still  earlier  to  the  ancient  Egyptians,  as  frontier  tribes. 
The  Thracians  were  notorious  for  their  fair  hair  and 
blue  eyes  many  centuries  before  our  era. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  dark  stock  predominates  in 
Southern  and  Western  France,  in  Spain,  along  the 
Ligurian  shore,  and  in  Western  and  Southern  Italy; 
in  Greece,  Asia,  Syria,  and  North  Africa;  in  Arabia, 
Persia,  Afghanistan,  and  Hindostan,  shading  gradually, 
through  all  stages  of  darkening,  into  the  type  of  the 
modern  Egyptian,  or  of  the  wild  Hill-man  of  the 
Dekkan.  Nor  is  there  any  record  of  the  existence  of 
a  different  population  in  all  these  countries. 

The  extreme  north  of  Europe,  and  the  northern  part  of 
Western  Asia,  are  at  present  occupied  by  a  Mongoloid 
stock,  and,  in  the  absence  of  evidence  to  the  contrary, 
may  be  assumed  to  have  been  so  peopled  from  a  very 
remote  epoch.  But,  as  I  have  said,  I  can  find  no  evi- 
dence that  this  stock  ever  took  part  in  peopling  Britain. 
Of  the  three  great  stocks  of  mankind  which  extend  from 
the  western  coast  of  the  great  Eurasiatic  continent  to  its 
southern  and  eastern  shores,  the  Mongoloids  occupy  a 
vast  triangle,  the  base  of  which  is  the  whole  of  Eastern 
Asia,  while  its  apex  lies  in  Lapland.  The  Melanochroi, 
on  the  other  hand,  may  be  represented  as  a  broad  band 
stretching  from  Ireland  to  Hindostan;  while  the  Xantho- 
chroic  area  lies  between  the  two,  thins  out,  so  to  speak, 
at  either  end,  and  mingles,  at  its  margins,  with  both  its 
neighbours. 


174  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vm. 

Such  is  a  brief  and  summary  statement  of  what  I 
believe  to  be  the  chief  facts  relating  to  the  physical 
ethnology  of  the  people  of  Britain.  The  conclusions 
which  1  draw  from  these  and  other  facts  are — (l)  That 
the  Melanochroi  and  the  Xanthochroi  are  two  separate 
races  in  the  biological  sense  of  the  word  race  ;  (2)  That 
they  have  had  the  same  general  distribution  as  at  pre- 
sent from  the  earliest  times  of  which  any  record  exists 
on  the  continent  of  Europe  ;  (3)  That  the  population 
of  the  British  Islands  is  derived  from  them,  and  from 
them  only. 

The  people  of  Europe,  however,  owe  their  national 
names,  not  to  their  physical  characteristics,  but  to  their 
languages,  or  to  their  political  relations  ;  which,  it  is 
plain,  need  not  have  the  slightest  relation  to  these 
characteristics. 

Thus,  it  is  quite  certain  that,  in  Caesar's  time,  Gaul 
was  divided  politically  into  three  nationalities  —  the 
Belgse,  the  Celtee,  and  the  Aquitani ;  and  that  the  last 
were  very  widely  different,  both  in  language  and  in 
physical  characteristics,  from  the  two  former.  The 
Belgaa  and  the  Celtae,  on  the  other  hand,  differed  compa- 
ratively little  either  in  physique  or  in  language.  On  the 
former  point  there  is  the  distinct  testimony  of  Strabo  ; 
as  to  the  latter,  St.  Jerome  states  that  the  "  Galatians 
had  almost  the  same  language  as  the  Treviri."  Now, 
the  Galatians  were  emigrant  Volcce  Tectosages,  and 
therefore  Celtae  ;  while  the  Treviri  were  Belgse. 

At  the  present  day,  the  physical  characters  of  the 
people  of  Belgic  Gaul  remain  distinct  from  those  of 
the  people  of  Aquitaine,  notwithstanding  the  immense 
changes  which  have  taken  place  since  Caesar's  time ; 
but  Belgae,  Celtse,  and  Aquitani  (all  but  a  mere  fraction 
of  the  last  two,  represented  by  the  Basques  and  the 
Britons)  are  fused  into  one  nationality,  "  le  peuple 


VIIL]  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  175 

Frangais."  But  they  have  adopted  the  language  of 
one  set  of  invaders,  and  the  name  of  another  ;  their 
original  names  and  languages  having  almost  disappeared. 
Suppose  that  the  French  language  remained  as  the  sole 
evidence  of  the  existence  of  the  population  of  Gaul, 
would  the  keenest  philologer  arrive  at  any  other  con- 
clusion than  that  this  population  was  essentially  and 
fundamentally  a  "Latin"  race,  which  had  had  some 
communication  with  Celts  and  Teutons  ?  Would  he  so 
much  as  suspect  the  former  existence  of  the  Aquitani  ? 

Community  of  language  testifies  to  close  contact 
between  the  people  who  speak  the  language,  but  to 
nothing  else ;  philology  has  absolutely  nothing  to  do 
with  ethnology,  except  so  far  as  it  suggests  the  existence 
or  the  absence  of  such  contact.  The  contrary  assump- 
tion, that  language  is  a  test  of  race,  has  introduced  the 
utmost  confusion  into  ethnological  speculation,  and  has 
nowhere  worked  greater  scientific  and  practical  mischief 
than  in  the  ethnology  of  the  British  Islands. 

What  is  known,  for  certain,  about  the  languages 
spoken  in  these  islands  and  their  affinities  may,  I  believe, 
be  summed  up  as  follows  : — 

I.  At  the  time  of  the  Roman  conquest,  one  language, 
the  Celtic,  under  two  principal  dialectical  divisions,  the 
Cymric  and  the  Gaelic,  was  spoken  throughout  the  British 
Islands.  Cymric  ivas  spoken  in  Britain,  Gaelic  in 
Ireland. 

If  a  language  allied  to  Basque  had  in  earlier  times 
been  spoken  in  the  British  Islands,  there  is  no  evidence 
that  any  Euskarian-speaking  people  remained  at  the 
time  of  the  Koman  conquest.  The  dark  and  the  fair 
population  of  Britain  alike  spoke  Celtic  tongues,  and 
therefore  the  name  "Celt"  is  as  applicable  to  the  one 
as  to  the  other. 

What  was  spoken  in  Ireland  can  only  be  surmised  by 


176  CEITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vm. 

reasoning  from  the  knowledge  of  later  times ;  but  there 
seems  to  be  no  doubt  that  it  was  Gaelic  ;  and  that  the 
Gaelic  dialect  was  introduced  into  the  "Western  High- 
lands by  Irish  invaders. 

II.  The  Belgce  and  the  Celtce,  with  the  offshoots  of  the 
latter  in  Asia  Minor,   spoke  dialects  of  the  Cymric 
division  of  Celtic. 

The  evidence  of  this  proposition  lies  in  the  statement 
of  St.  Jerome  before  cited ;  in  the  similarity  of  the  names 
of  places  in  Belgic  Gaul  and  in  Britain;  and  in  the 
direct  comparison  of  sundry  ancient  Gaulish  and  Belgic 
words  which  have  been  preserved,  with  the  existing 
Cymric  dialects,  for  which  I  must  refer  to  the  learned 
work  of  Brandes. 

Formerly,  as  at  the  present  day,  the  Cymric  dialects  of 
Celtic  were  spoken  by  both  the  fair  and  the  dark  stocks. 

III.  There  is  no  record  of  Gaelic  being  spoken  any- 
where save  in  Ireland,  Scotland,  and  the  Isle  of  Man. 

This  appears  to  be  the  final  result  of  the  long  discus- 
sions which  have  taken  place  on  this  much-debated 
question.  As  is  the  case  with  the  Cymric  dialects, 
Gaelic  is  now  spoken  by  both  dark  and  fair  stocks. 

IV.  When  the  Teutonic  languages  first  became  known, 
they  were  spoken  only  by  Xanthochroi,  that  is  to  say,  by 
the  Germans,  the  Scandinavians,  and  Goths.     And  they 
were  imported   by  Xanthochroi  into    Gaul   and   into 
Britain. 

In  Gaul  the  imported  Teutonic  dialect  has-been  com- 
pletely overpowered  by  the  more  or  less  modified  Latin, 
which  it  found  already  in  possession ;  and  what  Teutonic 
blood  there  may  be  in  modern  Frenchmen  is  not  ade- 
quately represented  in  their  language.  In  Britain,  on 
the  contrary,  the  Teutonic  dialects  have  overpowered 
the  pre-existing  forms  of  speech,  and  the  people  are 
vastly  less  "  Teutonic  "  than  their  language.  Whatever 


viit.]  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  177 

may  have  been  the  extent  to  which  the  Celtic-speaking 
population  of  the  eastern  half  of  Britain  was  trodden 
out  and  supplanted  by  the  Teutonic-speaking  Saxons  and 
Danes,  it  is  quite  certain  that  no  considerable  displace- 
ment of  the  Celtic-speaking  people  occurred  in  Cornwall, 
Wales,  or  the  Highlands  of  Scotland ;  and  that  nothing 
approaching  to  the  extinction  of  that  people  took  place 
in  Devonshire,  Somerset,  or  the  western  moiety  of  Britain 
generally.  Nevertheless,  the  fundamentally  Teutonic 
English  language  is  now  spoken  throughout  Britain, 
except  by  an  insignificant  fraction  of  the  population  in 
Wales  and  the  Western  Highlands.  But  it  is  obvious 
that  this  fact  affords  not  the  slightest  justification  for  the 
common  practice  of  speaking  of  the  present  inhabitants 
of  Britain  as  an  "Anglo-Saxon"  people.  It  is,  in  fact, 
just  as  absurd  as  the  habit  of  talking  of  the  French 
people  as  a  "  Latin  "  race,  because  they  speak  a  language 
which  is,  in  the  main,  derived  from  Latin.  And  the 
absurdity  becomes  the  more  patent  when  those  who  have 
no  hesitation  in  calling  a  Devonshire  man,  or  a  Cornish 
man,  an  "Anglo-Saxon,"  would  think  it  ridiculous  to  call 
a  Tipperary  man  by  the  same  title,  though  he  and  his 
forefathers  may  have  spoken  English  for  as  long  a  time 
as  the  Cornish  man. 

Ireland,  at  the  earliest  period  of  which  we  have  any 
knowledge,  contained  like  Britain,  a  dark  and  a  fair 
stock,  which,  there  is  every  reason  to  believe,  were 
identical  with  the  dark  and  the  fair  stocks  of  Britain. 
When  the  Irish  first  became  known  they  spoke  a  Gaelic 
dialect,  and  though,  for  many  centuries,  Scandinavians 
made  continual  incursions  upon,  and  settlements  among 
them,  the  Teutonic  languages  made  no  more  way  among 
the  Irish  than  they  did  among  the  French.  How  much 
Scandinavian  blood  was  introduced  there  is  no  evidence 
to  show.  But  after  the  conquest  of  Ireland  by  Henry  II., 


178  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vin. 

the  English  people,  consisting  in  part  of  the  descendants 
of  Cymric  speakers,  and  in  part  of  the  descendants 
of  Teutonic  speakers,  made  good  their  footing  in  the 
eastern  half  of  the  island,  as  the  Saxons  and  Danes  irfade 
good  theirs  in  England ;  and  did  their  best  to  complete 
the  parallel  by  attempting  the  extirpation  of  the  Gaelic- 
speaking  Irish.  And  they  succeeded  to  a  considerable 
extent ;  a  large  part  of  Eastern  Ireland  is  now  peopled 
by  men  who  are  substantially  English  by  descent,  and 
the  English  language  has  spread  over  the  land  far  beyond 
the  limits  of  English  blood. 

Ethnological  ly,  the  Irish  people  were  originally,  like 
the  people  of  Britain,  a  mixture  of  Melanochroi  and 
Xanthochroi.  They  resembled  the  Britons  in  speaking 
a  Celtic  tongue ;  but  it  was  a  Gaelic  and  not  a  Cymric 
form  of  the  Celtic  language.  Ireland  was  untouched  by 
the  Koman  conquest,  nor  do  the  Saxons  seem  to  have 
had  any  influence  upon  her  destinies,  but  the  Danes  and 
Norsemen  poured  in  a  contingent  of  Teutonism,  which 
has  been  largely  supplemented  by  English  and  Scotch 
efforts. 

What,  then,  is  the  value  of  the  ethnological  difference 
between  the  Englishman  of  the  western  half  of  England 
and  the  Irishman  of  the  eastern  half  of  Ireland  ?  For 
what  reason  does  the  one  deserve  the  name  of  a  "  Celt," 
and  not  the  other  ?  And  further,  if  we  turn  to  the 
inhabitants  of  the  western  half  of  Ireland,  why  should 
the  term  "  Celts "  be  applied  to  them  more  than  to 
the  inhabitants  of  Cornwall  ?  And  if  the  name  is  appli- 
cable to  the  one  as  justly  as  to  the  other,  why  should 
not  intelligence,  perseverance,  thrift,  industry,  sobriety, 
respect  for  law,  be  admitted  to  be  Celtic  virtues  ? 
And  why  should  we  not  seek  for  the  cause  of  their 
absence  in  something  else  than  the  idle  pretext  of 
"  Celtic  blood  '?  " 


VIIL]  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  179 

I  have  been  unable  to  meet  with  any  answers  to  these 
questions. 

V.  The  Celtic  and  the  Teutonic  dialects  are  members 
of ,  the  same  great  Aryan  family  of  languages ;  but  there 
is  evidence  to  show  that  a  non-Aryan  language  was  at 
one  time  spoken  over  a  large  extent  of  the  area  occupied 
by  Melanochroi  in  Europe. 

The  non- Aryan  language  here  referred  to  is  the  Euska- 
rian,  now  spoken  only  by  the  Basques,  but  which  seems 
in  earlier  times  to  have  been  the  language  of  the  Aqui- 
tanians  and  Spaniards,  and  may  possibly  have  extended 
much  further  to  the  East.  Whether  it  has  any  connec- 
tion with  the  Ligurian  and  Oscan  dialects  are  questions 
upon  which,  of  course,  I  do  not  presume  to  offer  any 
opinion.  But  it  is  important  to  remark  that  it  is  a 
language  the  area  of  which  has  gradually  diminished 
without  any  corresponding  extirpation  of  the  people 
who  primitively  spoke  it ;  so  that  the  people  of  Spain 
and  of  Aquitaine  at  the  present  day  must  be  largely 
"Euskarian"  by  descent  in  just  the  same  sense  as  the 
Cornish  men  are-" Celtic"  by  descent. 

Such  seem  to  me  to  be  the  main  facts  respecting  the 
ethnology  of  the  British  islands  and  of  Western  Europe, 
which  may  be  said  to  be  fairly  established.  The  hypo- 
thesis by  which  I  think  (with  De  Belloguet  and  Thurnam) 
the  facts  may  best  be  explained  is  this :  In  very  remote 
times  Western  Europe  and  the  British  islands  were 
inhabited  by  the  dark  stock,  or  the  Melanochroi,  alone, 
and  these  Melanochroi  spoke  dialects  allied  to  the 
Euskarian.  The  Xanthochroi,  spreading  over  the  great 
Eurasiatic  plains  westward,  and  speaking  Aryan  dialects, 
gradually  invaded  the  territories  of  the  Melanochroi. 
The  Xanthochroi,  who  thus  came  into  contact  with  the 
Western  Melanochroi,. spoke  a  Celtic  language;  and  that 
Celtic  language,  whether  Cymric  or  Gaelic,  spread  over 

9 


180  CEITIQVES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [vm. 

the  Melanochroi  far  beyond  the  limits  of  intermixture  of 
blood,  supplanting  Euskarian,  just  as  English  and  French 
have  supplanted  Celtic.  Even  as  early  as  Csesar's  time, 
I  suppose  that  the  Euskarian  was  everywhere,  except  in 
Spain  and  in  Aquitaine,  replaced  by  Celtic,  and  thus  the 
Celtic  speakers  were  no  longer  of  one  ethnological  stock, 
but  of  two.  Both  in  Western  Europe  and  in  England 
a  third  wave  of  language — in  the  one  case  Latin,  in 
the  other  Teutonic — has  spread  over  the  same  area.  In 
Western  Europe,  it  has  left  a  fragment  of  the  primary 
Euskarian  in  one  corner  of  the  country,  and  a  fragment 
of  the  secondary  Celtic  in  another.  In  the  British 
islands,  only  outlying,  pools  of  the  secondary  linguistic 
wave  remain  in  Wales,  the  Highlands,  Ireland,  and  the 
Isle  of  Man.  If  this  hypothesis  is  a  sound  one,  it 
follows  that  the  name  of  Celtic  is  not  properly  appli- 
cable to  the  Melanochroic  or  dark  stock  of  Europe. 
They  are  merely,  so  to  speak,  secondary  Celts.  The 
primary  and  aboriginal  Celtic-speaking  people  are 
Xanthochroi — the  typical  Gauls  of  the  ancient  writers, 
and  the  close  allies  by  blood,  oistoms,  and  language,  of 
the  Germans. 


IX. 

PALAEONTOLOGY  AND   THE   DOCTRINE   OP 
EVOLUTION. 

(THE  ANNIVERSARY  ADDRESS  TO  THE  GEOLOGICAL  SOCIETY, 
FOR  1870.) 

IT  is  now  eight  years  since,  in  the  absence  of  the  late 
Mr.  Leonard  Horner,  who  then  presided  over  us,  it  fell 
to  my  lot,  as  one  of  the  Secretaries  of  this  Society,  to 
draw  up  the  customary  Annual  Address.  I  availed 
myself  of  'the  opportunity  to  endeavour  to  "  take  stock  " 
of  that  portion  of  the  science  of  biology  which  is  com- 
monly called  "  palaeontology,"  as  it  then  existed ;  and, 
discussing  one  after  another  the  doctrines  held  by  palae- 
ontologists, I  put  before  you  the  results  of  my  attempts 
to  sift  the  well-established  from  the  hypothetical  or  the 
doubtful.  Permit  me  briefly  to  recall  to  your  minds 
what  those  results  were  : — 

1.  The  living  population  of  all  parts  of  the  earth's 
surface  which  have  yet  been  examined  has  undergone  a 
succession  of  changes  which,  upon  the  whole,  have  been 
of  a  slow  and  gradual  character. 

2.  When  the  fossil  remains  which  are  the  evidences  of 
these  successive  changes,  as  they  have  occurred  in  any 
two  more  or  less  distant  parts  of  the  surface  of  the  earth, 
are  compared,  they  exhibit  a  certain  broad  and  general 


182  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [ix. 

parallelism.  In  other  words,  certain  forms  of  life  in 
one  locality  occur  in  the  same  general  order  of  suc- 
cession as,  or  are  homotaxial  with,  similar  forms  in  the 
other  locality. 

3.  Homotaxis  is  not  to  be  held  identical  with  synchro- 
nism without  independent  evidence.     It  is  possible  that 
similar,  or  even  identical,  faunae  and  florae  in  two  different 
localities  may  be  of  extremely  different  ages,  if  the  term 
"  age  "  is  used  in  its  proper  chronological  sense.     I  stated 
that  "geographical  provinces,  or  zones,  may  have  been  as 
distinctly  marked  in  the  Palaeozoic  epoch  as  at  present ; 
and  those  seemingly  sudden  appearances  of  new  genera 
and  species,  which  we  ascribe  to  new  creation,  may  be 
simple  results  of  migration." 

4.  The  opinion  that  the  oldest  known  fossils  are  the 
earliest  forms  of  life  has  no  solid  foundation. 

5.  If  we   confine    ourselves  to   positively  ascertained 
facts,  the  total  amount  of  change  in  the  forms  of  animal 
and  vegetable  life,  since  the  existence  of  such  forms  is  re- 
corded, is  small.     When  compared  with  the  lapse  of  time 
since  the  first  appearance    of  these  forms,  the  amount 
of  change  is  wonderfully  small.     Moreover,  in  each  great 
group  of  the  animal  and  vegetable  kingdoms,  there  are 
certain  forms  which  I  termed  PERSISTENT  TYPES,  which 
have   remained,  with  but  very  little   apparent   change, 
from  their  first  appearance  to  the  present  time. 

6.  In  answer  to  the  question  "What,  then,  does  an 
impartial  survey  of  the  positively  ascertained  truths  of 
palaeontology  testify  in  relation  to  the  common  doctrines 
of  progressive  modification,  which  suppose  that  modifi- 
cation to  have  taken  place  by  a  necessary  progress  from 
more  to  less  embryonic  forms,  from  more  to  less  gene- 
ralized types,  within  the  limits  of  the  period  represented 
by  the  fossiliferous  rocks?"    I  reply,  "  It  negatives  these 
doctrines  ;  for  it  either  shows  us  no  evidence  of  such 


ix.]  PAL^ONTOLOG  Y  AND  E  VOL UTION.  183 

modification,  or  demonstrates  such  modification  as  has 
occurred  to  have  been  very  slight ;  and,  as  to  the  nature 
of  that  modification,  it  yields  no  evidence  whatsoever 
that  the  earlier  members  of  any  long-continued  group 
were  more  generalized  in  structure  than  the  later  ones/' 

I  think  that  I  cannot  employ  my  last  opportunity  of 
addressing  you,  officially,  more  properly — I  may  say 
more  dutifully — than  in  revising  these  old  judgments 
with  such  help  as  further  knowledge  and  reflection,  and 
an  extreme  desire  to  get  at  the  truth,  may  afford  me. 

1.  With  respect  to  the  first  proposition,  I  may  remark 
that  whatever   may   be  the   case    among   the   physical 
geologists,    catastrophic   palaeontologists   are    practically 
extinct.     It   is   now  no  part   of  recognized   geological 
doctrine  that  the  species  of  one  formation  all  died  out 
and  were  replaced  by  a  brand-new  set  in  the  next  forma- 
tion.    On  the  contrary,  it  is  generally,  if  not  universally, 
agreed  that  the  succession  of  life  has  been  the  result  of 
a  slow  and  gradual  replacement  of  sp.ecies  by  species  ; 
and  that  all  appearances  of  abruptness  of  change  are  due 
to  breaks  in  the  series  of  deposits,  or  other  changes  in 
physical  conditions.     The  continuity  of  living  forms  has 
been  unbroken  from  the  earliest  times  to  the  present  day. 

2,  3.  The  use  of  the  word  "homotaxis"  instead  of 
"synchronism"  has  not,  so  far  as  I  know,  found  much 
favour  in  the  eyes  of  geologists.     I  hope,  therefore,  that 
it  is  a  love  for  scientific  caution,  and  not  mere  personal 
affection  for  a  bantling  of  my  own,  which  leads  me  still 
to  think  that  the  change  of  phrase  is  of  importance,  and 
that  the  sooner  it  is  made,  the  sooner  shall  we  get  rid  of 
a  number  of  pitfalls  which  beset  the  reasoner  upon  the 
facts  and  theories  of  geology. 

One  of  the  latest  pieces  of  foreign  intelligence  which 
has  reached  us  is  the  information  that  the  Austrian 
geologists  have,  at  last,  succumbed  to  the  weighty 


184  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [ix. 

evidence  which  M.  Barrande  has  accumulated,  and  have 
admitted  the  doctrine  of  colonies.  But  the  admission 
of  the  doctrine  of  colonies  implies  the  further  ad- 
mission that  even  identity  of  organic  remains  is  no 
proof  of  the .  synchronism  of  the  deposits  which  con- 
tain them. 

4.  The  discussions  touching  the  Eozoon,  which  com- 
menced in  1864,  have  abundantly  justified  the  fourth 
proposition.     In  1862,  the  oldest  record  of  life  was  in 
the  Cambrian  rocks ;  but  if  the  Eozoon  be,  as  Principal 
Dawson  and  Dr.  Carpenter  have  shown  so  much  reason 
for  believing,  the  remains  of  a  living  being,  the  discovery 
of  its  true  nature  carried  life  back  to  a  period  which,  as 
Sir  William  Logan  has  observed,  is  as  remote  from  that 
during  which  the  Cambrian  rocks  were  deposited,  as  the 
Cambrian   epoch  itself  is  from  the  tertiaries.     In  other 
words,  the  ascertained  duration  of  life  upon  the  globe 
was  nearly  doubled  at  a  stroke. 

5.  The  significance  of  persistent  types,  and   of  the 
small  amount  of  change  which  has  taken  place  even  in 
those  forms  which  can  be  shown  to  have  been  modified, 
becomes  greater  and  greater  in  my  eyes,  the  longer  I 
occupy  myself  with  the  biology  of  the  past. 

Consider  how  long  a  time  has  elapsed  since  the  Miocene 
epoch.  Yet,  at  that  time,  there  is  reason  to  believe  that 
every  important  group  in  every  order  of  the  Mammalia 
was  represented.  Even  the  comparatively  scanty  Eocene 
fauna  yields  examples  of  the  orders  Cheiroptera,  Insec- 
tivora,  Rodentia,  and  Perissodactyla ;  of  Artiodactyla 
under  both  the  Ruminant  and  the  Porcine  modifications; 
of  Carnivora,  Cetacea,  and  Marsupialia. 

Or,  if  we  go  back  to  the  older  half  of  the  Mesozoic 
epoch,  how  truly  surprising  it  is  to  find  every  order  of 
the  Reptilia,  except  the  Opkidia,  represented ;  while 
some  groups,  such  as  the  Ornithoscelida  and  the  Ptero- 


ix.]  PALEONTOLOGY  AND  EVOLUTION.  185 

sauria,  more  specialized  than  any  which  now  exist, 
abounded. 

There  is  one  division  of  the  Amphibia  which  offers 
especially  important  evidence  upon  this  point,  inasmuch 
as  it  bridges  over  the  gap  between  the  Mesozoic  and  the 
Palaeozoic  formations  (often  supposed  to  be  of  such  pro- 
digious magnitude),  extending,  as  it  does,  from  the  bottom 
of  the  Carboniferous  series  to  the  top  of  the  Trias,  if  not 
into  the  Lias.  I  refer  to  the  Labyrinth  odonts.  As  the 
address  of  1862  was  passing  through  the  press,  I  was 
able  to  mention,  in  a  note,  the  discovery  of  a  large 
Labyrinthodont,  with  well-ossified  vertebrso,  in  the  Edin- 
burgh coal-field.  Since  that  time  eight  or  ten  distil] ct 
genera  of  Labyrinthodonts  have  been  discovered  in  the 
Carboniferous  rocks  of  England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland, 
not  to  mention  the  American  forms  described  by  Principal 
Dawson  and  Professor  Cope.  So  that,  at  the  present 
time,  the  Labyrinthodont  Fauna  of  the  Carboniferous 
rocks  is  more  extensive  and  diversified  than  that  of  the 
Trias,  while  its  chief  types,  so  far  as  osteology  enables  us 
to  judge,  are  quite  as  highly  organized.  Thus  it  is  certain 
that  a  comparatively  highly  organized  vertebrate  type, 
such  as  that  of  the  Labyrinthodonts,  is  capable  of  per- 
sisting, with  no  considerable  change,  through  the  period 
represented  by  the  vast  deposits  which  constitute  the 
Carboniferous,  the  Permian,  and  the  Triassic  formations. 

The  very  remarkable  results  which  have  been  brought 
to  light  by  the  sounding  and  dredging  operations,  which 
have  been  carried  on  with  such  remarkable  success  by 
the  expeditions  sent  out  by  our  own,  the  American,  and 
the  Swedish  Governments,  under  the  supervision  of  able 
naturalists,  have  a  bearing  in  the  same  direction.  These 
investigations  have  demonstrated  the  existence,  at  great 
depths  in  the  ocean,  of  living  animals  .in  some  cases 
identical  with,  in  others  very  similar  to,  those  which  are 


186  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [ix. 

found  fossilized  in  the  white  chalk.  The  Gldbigerince, 
Cyatholiths,  Coccospheres,  Discoliths  in  the  one  are  abso- 
lutely identical  with  those  in  the  other ;  there  are  iden- 
tical, or  closely  analogous,  species  of  Sponges,  Echino- 
derms,  and  Brachiopods.  Off  the  coast  of  Portugal, 
there  now  lives  a  species  of  Beryx,  which,  doubtless, 
leaves  its  bones  and  scales  here  and  there  in  the 
Atlantic  ooze,  as  its  predecessor  left  its  spoils  in  the 
mud  of  the  sea  of  the  Cretaceous  epoch. 

Many  years  ago1  I  ventured  to  speak  of  the  Atlantic 
mud  as  "  modern  chalk,"  and  I  know  of  no  fact  incon- 
sistent with  the  view  which  Professor  "Wyville  Thomson 
has  advocated,  that  the  modern  chalk  is  not  only  the 
lineal  descendant  of  the  ancient  chalk,  but  that  it  remains, 
so  to  speak,  in  the  possession  of  the  ancestral  estate ; 
and  that  from  the  Cretaceous  period  (if  not  much  earlier) 
to  the  present  day,  the  deep  sea  has  covered  a  large  part 
of  what  is  now  the  area  of  the  Atlantic.  But  if  Globi- 
gerina,  and  Terebratula  caput-serpentis  and  Beryx,  not 
to  mention  other  forms  of  animals  and  of  plants,  thus 
bridge  over  the  interval  between  the  present  and  the 
Mesozoic  periods,  is  it  possible  that  the  majority  of  other 
living  things  underwent  a  "sea-change  into  something 
new  and  strange  "  all  at  once  ? 

6.  Thus  far  I  have  endeavoured  to  expand  and  to 
enforce  by  fresh  arguments,  but  not  to  modify  in  any 
important  respect,  the  ideas  submitted  to  you  on  a 
former  occasion.  But  when  I  come  to  the  propositions 
touching  progressive  modification,  it  appears  to  me,  with 
the  help  of  the  new  light  which  has  broken  from  various 
quarters,  that  there  is  much  ground  for  softening  the 
somewhat  Brutus-like  severity  with  which,  in  1862,  I 
dealt  with  a  doctrine,  for  the  truth  of  which  I  should 

1  See  an  article  in  the  Saturday  Revicio,  for  1858,  on  "  Chalk,  Ancient  and 
Modern." 


ix.]  PALEONTOLOGY  AND  EVOLUTION.  187 

have  been  glad  enough  to  be  able  to  find  a  good  foun- 
dation. So  far,  indeed,  as  the  Invertebrata  and  the 
lower  Vertebrata  are  concerned,  the  facts  and  the  con- 
clusions which  are  to  be  drawn  from  them  appear  to  me 
to  remain  what  they  were.  For  anything  that,  as  yet, 
appears  to  the  contrary, '  the  earliest  known  Marsupials 
may  have  been  as  highly  organized  as  their  living  con- 
geners ;  the  Permian  lizards  show  no  signs  of  inferiority 
to  those  of  the  present  day  ;  the  Labyrinthodonts  can- 
not be  placed  below  the  living  Salamander  and  Triton ; 
the  Devonian  Ganoids  are  closely  related  to  Polypterus 
and  to  Lepidosiren. 

But  when  we  turn  to  the  higher  Vertebrata,  the  results 
of  recent  investigations,  however  we  may  sift  and  criticise 
them,  seem  to  me  to  leave  a  clear  balance  in  favour  of 
the  doctrine  of  the  evolution  of  living  forms  one  from 
another.  Nevertheless,  in  discussing  this  question,  it  is 
very  necessary  to  discriminate  carefully  between  the  dif- 
ferent kinds  of  evidence  from  fossil  remains  which  are 
brought  forward  in  favour  of  evolution. 

Every  fossil  which  takes  an  intermediate  place  between 
forms  of  life  already  known,  may  be  said,  so  far  as  it  is 
intermediate,  to  be  evidence  in  favour  of  evolution,  inas- 
much as  it  shows  a  possible  road  by  which  evolution 
may  have  taken  place.  But  the  mere  discovery  of  such 
a  form  does  not,  in  itself,  prove  that  evolution  took  place 
by  and  through  it,  nor  does  it  constitute  more  than 
presumptive  evidence  in  favour  of  evolution  in  general. 
Suppose  A,  B,  C  to  be  three  forms,  while  B  is  inter- 
mediate in  structure  between  A  and  C.  Then  the  doctrine 
of  evolution  offers  four  possible  alternatives.  A  may 
have  become  C  by  way  of  B ;  or  C  may  have  become  A 
by  way  of  B ;  or  A  and  C  may  be  independent  modifi- 
cations of  B ;  or  A,  B,  and  C  may  be  independent  modifi- 
cations of  some  unknown  D.  Take  the  case  of  the  Pigs, 


188  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [ix. 

the  ^oplotheridw,  and  the  Ruminants.  The  Anoplo- 
tlieridw  are  intermediate  between  the  first  and  the  last ; 
but  this  does  not  tell  us  whether  the  Ruminants  have 
conie  from  the  Pigs,  or  the  Pigs  from  Ruminants,  or  both 
from  Anoplotheridce,  or  whether  Pigs,  Ruminants,  and 
AnoplotheridcB  alike  may  not  have  diverged  from 
some  common  stock. 

But  if  it  can  be  shown  that  A,  B,  and  C  exhibit  suc- 
cessive stages  in  the  degree  of  modification,  or  speciali- 
zation, of  the  same  type  ;  and  if,  further,  it  can  be  proved 
that  they  occur  in  successively  newer  deposits,  A  being 
in  the  oldest  and  C  in  the  newest,  then  the  intermediate 
character  of  B  has  quite  another  importance,  and  I  should 
accept  it,  without  hesitation,  as  a  link  in  the  genealogy 
of  C.  I  should  consider  the  burden  of  proof  to  be 
thrown  upon  anyone  who  denied  C  to  have  been  derived 
from  A  by  way  of  B,  or  in  some  closely  analogous  fashion ; 
for  it  is  always  probable  that  one  may  not  hit  upon  the 
exact  line  of  filiation,  and,  in  dealing  with  fossils,  may 
mistake  uncles  and  nephews  for  fathers  and  sons. 

I  think  it  necessary  to  distinguish  between  the  former 
and  the  latter  classes  of  intermediate  forms,  as  intercalary 
types  and  linear  types.  "When  I  apply  the  former  term, 
I  merely  mean  to  say  that  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  form 
B,  so  named,  is  intermediate  between  the  others,  in  the 
sense  in  which  the  Anoplotherium  is  intermediate  between 
the  Pigs  and  the  Ruminants — without  either  affirming, 
or  denying,  any  direct  genetic  relation  between  the  three 
forms  involved.  When  I  apply  the  latter  term,  on  the 
other  hand,  I  mean  to  express  the  opinion  that  the  forms 
A,  B,  and  C  constitute  a  line  of  descent,  and  that  B  is 
thus  part  of  the  lineage  of  C. 

From  the  time  when  Cuvier's  wonderful  researches 
upon  the  extinct  Mammals  of  the  Paris  gypsum  first  made 
intercalary  types  known,  and  caused  them  to  be  recognized 


ix.]  PALEONTOLOGY  AND  E\ 

as  such,  the  number  of  such  forms  hi  ,^=z==— _ 
among  the  higher  Mammalia.  Not  only  cto  we  now 
know  numerous  intercalary  forms  of  Ungulata,  but  M. 
Gaudry's  great  monograph  upon  the  fossils  of  Pikermi 
(which  strikes  me  as  one  of  the  most  perfect  pieces  of 
palaeontological  work  I  have  seen  for  a  long  time)  shows 
us,  among  the  Primates,  Mesopithecus  as  an  intercalary 
form  between  the  Semnopitheci  and  the  Macaci ;  and 
among  the  Carnivora,  Hycenictis  and  Ictitherium  as 
intercalary,  or,  perhaps,  linear  types  between  the  Viver- 
ridce  and  the  Hycenidce. 

Hardly  any  order  of  the  higher  Mammalia  stands  so 
apparently  separate  and  isolated  from  the  rest  as  that 
of  the  Cetacea ;  though  a  careful  consideration  of  the 
structure  of  the  pinnipede  Carnivora,  or  Seals,  shows, 
in  them,  many  an  approximation  towards  the  still  more 
completely  marine  mammals.  The  extinct  Zeuglodon, 
however,  presents  us  with  an  intercalary  form  between 
the  type  of  the  Seals  and  that  of  the  Whales.  The 
skull  of  this  great  Eocene  sea-monster,  in  fact,  shows 
by  the  narrow  and  prolonged  interorbital  region ;  the 
extensive  union  of  the  parietal  bones  in  a  sagittal  suture; 
the  well-developed  nasal  bones  ;  the  distinct  and  large 
incisors  implanted  in  premaxillary  bones,  which  take  a 
full  share  in  bounding  the  fore  part  of  the  gape ;  the 
two-fanged  molar  teeth  with  triangular  and  serrated 
crowns,  not  exceeding  five  on  each  side  in  each  jaw ; 
and  the  existence  of  a  deciduous  dentition — its  close 
relation  with  the  Seals.  While,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
produced  rostral  form  of  the  snout,  the  long  symphysis, 
and  the  low  coronary  process  of  the  mandible  are  ap- 
proximations to  the  cetacean  form  of  those  parts. 

The  scapula  resembles  that  of  the  cetacean  Hyperoodon, 
but  the  supra-spinous  fossa  is  larger  and  more  seal-like  ; 
as  is  the  humerus,  which  differs  from  that  of  the  Cetacea 


190  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [ix. 

in  presenting  true  articular  surfaces  for  the  free  jointing 
of  the  bones  of  the  fore-arm.  In  the  apparently  com- 
plete absence  of  hinder  limbs,  and  in  the  characters  of 
the  vertebral  column,  the  Zeuglodon  lies  on  the  cetacean 
side  of  the  boundary  line  ;  so  that,  upon  the  whole,  the 
Zeuglodonts,  transitional  as  they  are,  are  conveniently 
retained  in  the  cetacean  order.  And  the  publication,  in 
1864,  of  M.  Van  Beneden's  memoir  on  the  Miocene  and 
Pliocene  Squalodon,  furnished  much  better  means  than 
anatomists  previously  possessed  of  fitting  in  another 
link  of  the  chain  which  connects  the  existing  Cetacea 
with  Zeuglodon.  The  teeth  are  much  more  numerous, 
although  the  molars  exhibit  the  zeuglodont  double  fang  ; 
the  nasal  bones  are  very  short,  and  the  upper  surface  of 
the  rostrum  presents  the  groove,  filled  up  during  life  by 
the  prolongation  of  the  ethmoidal  cartilage,  which  is  so 
characteristic  of  the  majority  of  the  Cetacea. 

It  appears  to  me  that,  just  as  among  the  existing 
Carnivora,  the  walruses  and  the  eared  seals  are  inter- 
calary forms  between  the  fissipede  Carnivora  and  the 
ordinary  seals,  so  the  Zeuglodonts  are  intercalary  between 
the  Carnivora,  as  a  whole,  and  the  Cetacea.  Whether 
the  Zeuglodonts  are  also  linear  types  in  their  relation  to 
these  two  groups  cannot  be  ascertained,  until  we  have 
more  definite  knowledge  than  we  possess  at  present, 
respecting  the  relations  in  time  of  the  Carnivora  and 
Cetacea. 

Thus  far  we  have  been  concerned  with  the  intercalary 
types  which  occupy  the  intervals  between  Families  or 
Orders  of  the  same  class ;  but  the  investigations  which 
have  been  carried  on  by  Professor  Gegenbaur,  Professor 
Cope,  and  myself  into  the  structure  and  relations  of  the 
extinct  reptilian  forms  of  the  Ornithoscelida  (or  Dino- 
sauria  and  Compsognatha)  have  brought  to  light  the 
existence  of  intercalary  forms  between  what  have  hitherto 


ix.]  PALEONTOLOGY  AND  EVOLUTION.  191 

been  always  regarded  as  very  distinct  classes  of  the 
vertebrate  sub-kingdom,  namely  Reptilia  and  Aves. 
Whatever  inferences  may,  or  may  not,  be  drawn  from 
the  fact,  it  is  now  an  established  truth  that,  in  many 
of  these  Ornitlioscelida,  the  hind  limbs  and  the  pelvis 
are  much  more  similar  to  those  of  Birds  than  they  are 
to  those  of  Eeptiles,  and  that  these  Bird-reptiles,  or 
Keptile-birds,  were  more  or  less  completely  bipedal. 

When  I  addressed  you  in  1862,  I  should  have  been 
bold  indeed  had  I  suggested  that  palaeontology  would 
before  long  show  us  the  possibility  of  a  direct  transition 
from  the  type  of  the  lizard  to  that  of  the  ostrich.  At 
the  present  moment  we  have,  in  the  Ornithoscelida,  the 
intercalary  type,  which  proves  that  transition  to  be 
something  more  than  a  possibility  ;  but  it  is  very  doubt- 
ful whether  any  of  the  genera  of  Ornitlioscelida  with 
which  we  are  at  present  acquainted  are  the  actual  linear 
types  by  which  the  transition  from  the  lizard  to  the  bird 
was  effected.  These,  very  probably,  are  still  hidden  from 
us  in  the  older  formations. 

Let  us  now  endeavour  to  find  some  cases  of  true 
linear  types,  or  forms  which  are  intermediate  between 
others  because  they  stand  in  a  direct  genetic  relation  to 
them.  It  is  no  easy  matter  to  find  clear  and  unmis- 
takable evidence  of  filiation  among  fossil  animals;  for, 
in  order  that  such  evidence  should  be  quite  satisfactory, 
it  is  necessary  that  we  should  be  acquainted  with  all 
the  most  important  features  of  the  organization  of  the 
animals  which  are  supposed  to  be  thus  related,  and  not 
merely  with  the  fragments  upon  which  the  genera  and 
species  of  the  palaeontologist  are  so  often  based.  M. 
Gaudry  has  arranged  the  species  of  Hycenidce,  Probos- 
cidea,  Rhinocerotidce,  and  JEquidce  in  their  order  of 
filiation  from  their  earliest  appearance  in  the  Miocene 
epoch  to  the  present  time,  and  Professor  Kutimeyer  has 


192  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [ix. 

drawn  up  similar  schemes  for  the  Oxen  and  other 
Ungulata  —  with  what,  I  am  disposed  to  think,  is  a  fair 
and  probable  approximation  to  the  order  of  nature.  But, 
as  no  one  is  better  aware  than  these  two  learned,  acute, 
and  philosophical  biologists,  all  such  arrangements  must 
be  regarded  as  provisional,  except  in  those  cases  in 
which,  by  a  fortunate  accident,  large  series  of  remains 
are  obtainable  from  a  thick  and  wide-spread  series  of 
deposits.  It  is  easy  to  accumulate  probabilities  —  hard 
to  make  out  some  particular  case  in  such  a  way  that  it 
will  stand  rigorous  criticism. 

After  much  search,  however,  I  think  that  such  a 
case  is  to  be  made  out  in  favour  of  the  pedigree  of 
the  Horses. 

The  genus  Equus  is  represented  as  far  back  as  the 
latter  part  of  the  Miocene  epoch  ;  but  in  deposits 
belonging  to  the  middle  of  that  epoch  its  place  is 
taken  by  two  other  genera,  Hipparion  and  Anchi- 
therium,',1  and,  in  the  lowest  Miocene  and  upper  Eocene, 
only  the  last  genus  occurs.  A  species  of  Anchithemim 
was  referred  by  Cuvier  to  the  Palceotheria  under  the 
name  of  P.  aurelianense.  The  grinding-teeth  are  in  fact 
very  similar  in  shape  and  in  pattern,  and  in  the  absence 
of  any  thick  layer  of  cement,  to  those  of  some  species 
of  Palceotherium,  especially  Cuvier's  Palceotherium  minus, 
which  has  been  formed  into  a  separate  genus,  Plagio- 
lophus,  by  Pomel.  But  in  the  fact  that  there  are  only 
six  full-sized  grinders  in  the  lower  jaw,  the  first  premolar 
being  very  small  ;  that  the  anterior  grinders  are  as  large 


r  Hermann  von  Meyer  gave  the  name  of  Anchitherium  to  A.  HzguerrcBi  and 
in  his  paper  on  the  subject  he  takes  great  pains  to  distinguish  the  latter  as  the 
type  of  a  new  genus,  from  Cuvier's  Paltfotherium  $  Orleans.  But  it  is  precisely 
the  Palceotherium  d'Orleans  which  is  the  type  of  Christol's  genus  Hippari- 
therium  ;  and  thus,  though  Hipparitherium  is  of  later  date  than  Anchitherium^ 
it  seemed  to  me  to  have  a  sort  of  equitable  right  to  recognition  when  this 
address  was  written.  On  the  whole,  however,  it  seems  most  convenient  to 
adopt  Anchitherium. 


ix.]  PALEONTOLOGY  AND  EVOLUTION.  193 

as,  or  rather  larger  than,  the  posterior  ones  ;  that  the 
second  premolar  has  an  anterior  prolongation  ;  and  that 
the  posterior  molar  of  the  lower  jaw  has,  as  Cuvier 
pointed  out,  a  posterior  lobe  of  much  smaller  size  and 
different  form,  the  dentition  of  Anchitherium  departs 
from  the  type  of  the  Palccotherium,  and  approaches 
that  of  the  Horse. 

Again,  the  skeleton  of  Ancliitherium  is  extremely 
equine.  M.  Christol  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  the 
description  of  the  bones  of  the  horse,  or  the  ass,  current 
in  veterinary  works,  would  fit  those  of  Anchitherium. 
And,  in  a  general  way,  this  may  be  true  enough  ;  but 
there  are  some  most  important  differences,  which,  indeed, 
are  justly  indicated  by  the  same  careful  observer.  Thus 
the  ulna  is  complete  throughout,  and  its  shaft  is  not  a 
mere  rudiment,  fused  into  one  bone  with  the  radius. 
There  are  three  toes,  one  large  in  the  middle  and  one 
small  on  each  side.  The  femur  is  quite  like  that  of  a 
horse,  and  has  the  characteristic  fossa  above  the  external 
condyle.  In  the  British  Museum  there  is  a  most  in- 
structive specimen  of  the  leg-bones,  showing  that  the 
fibula  was  represented  by  the  external  malleolus  and  by 
a  flat  tongue  of  bone,  which  extends  up  from  it  on  the 
outer  side  of  the  tibia,  and  is  closely  ankylosed  with  the 
latter  bone.1  The  hind  toes  are  three,  like  those  of  the 
fore  leg  ;  and  the  middle  metatarsal  bone  is  much  less 
compressed  from  side  to  side  than  that  of  the  horse. 

In  the  Hipparion  the  teeth  nearly  resemble  those  of 
the  Horses,  though  the  crowns  of  the  grinders  are  not 
so  long ;  like  those  of  the  Horses,  they  are  abundantly 
coated  with  cement.  The  shaft  of  the  ulna  is  reduced 

1 1  am  indebted  to  M.  Gervais  for  a  specimen  which  indicates  that  the  fibula 
was  complete,  at  any  rate,  in  some  cases ;  and  for  a  very  interesting  ramus  of  a 
mandible,  which  shows  that,  as  in  the  Palaeotheria,  the  hindermost  milk-molar 
of  the  lower  jaw  was  devoid  of  the  posterior  lobe  which  exists  in  the  hindermost 
true  molar. 


194  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [ix. 

to  a  mere  style  ankylosed  throughout  nearly  its  whole 
length  with  the  radius,  and  appearing  to  be  little  more 
than  a  ridge  on  the  surface  of  the  latter  bone  until  it  is 
carefully  examined.  The  front  toes  are  still  three,  but 
the  outer  ones  are  more  slender  than  in  Anchitherium, 
and  their  hoofs  smaller  in  proportion-  to  that  of  the 
middle  toe :  they  are,  in  fact,  reduced  to  mere  dew- 
claws,  and  do  not  touch  the  ground.  In  the  leg,  the 
distal  end  of  the  fibula  is  so  completely  united  with  the 
tibia  that  it  appears  to  be  a  mere  process  of  the  latter 
bone,  as  in  the  Horses. 

In  Equus,  finally,  the  crowns  of  the  grinding-teeth 
become  longer,  and  their  patterns  are  slightly  modified  ; 
the  middle  of  the  shaft  of  the  ulna  usually  vanishes,  and 
its  proximal  and  distal  ends  ankylose  with  the  radius. 
The  phalanges  of  the  two  outer  toes  in  each  foot  dis- 
appear, their  metacarpal  and  metatarsal  bones  being  left 
as  the  "  splints." 

The  Hipparion  has  large  depressions  on  the  face  in 
front  of  the  orbits,  like  those  for  the  "  larmiers  "  of  many 
ruminants ;  but  traces  of  these  are  to  be  seen  in  some 
of  the  fossil  horses  from  the  Sewalik  Hills;  and,  as 
Leidy's  recent  researches  show,  they  are  preserved  in 
Anchitherium. 

When  we  consider  these  facts,  and  the  further  circum- 
stance that  the  Hipparions,  the  remains  of  which  have 
been  collected  in  immense  numbers,  were  subject,  as 
M.  Gaudry  and  others  have  pointed  out,  to  a  great 
range  of  variation,  it  appears  to  me  impossible  to  resist 
the  conclusion  that  the  types  of  the  Anchitherium,  of 
the  Hipparion,  and  of  the  ancient  Horses  constitute  the 
lineage  of  the  modern  Horses,  the  Hipparion  being  the 
intermediate  stage  between  the  other  two,  and  answer- 
ing to  B  in  my  former  illustration. 

The  process  by  which  the  Anchitherium  has  been  con- 


ix.]  PALEONTOLOGY  AND  EVOLUTION.  105 

verted  into  Equus  is  one  of  specialization,  or  of  more  and 
more  complete  deviation  from  what  might  be  called  the 
average  form  of  an  ungulate  mammal.  In  the  Horses, 
the  reduction  of  some  parts  of  the  limbs,  together  with 
the  special  modification  of  those  which  are  left,  is  carried 
to  a  greater  extent  than  in  any  other  hoofed  mammals. 
The  reduction  is  less  and  the  specialization  is  less  in 
the  Hipparion,  and  still  less  in  the  Anchitherium ;  but 
yet,  as  compared  with  other  mammals,  the  reduction 
and  specialization  of  parts  in  the  Anchitherium  remain 
great. 

Is  it  not  probable  then,  that,  just  as  in  the  Miocene 
epoch,  we  find  an  ancestral  equine  form  less  modified 
than  Equus,  so,  if  we  go  back  to  the  Eocene  epoch,  we 
shall  find  some  quadruped  related  to  the  Anchitlierium, 
as  Hipparion  is  related  to  Equus,  and  consequently 
departing  less  from  the  average  form  ? 

I  think  that  this  desideratum  is  very  nearly,  if  not 
quite,  supplied  by  Plagiolophus,  remains  of  which  occur 
abundantly  in  some  parts  of  the  Upper  and  Middle 
Eocene  formations.  The  patterns  of  the  grinding-teeth 
of  Plagiolophus  are  similar  to  those  of  Anchitherium,  and 
their  crowns  are  as  thinly  covered  with  cement ;  but  the 
grinders  diminish  in  size  forwards,  and  the  last  lower 
molar  has  a  large  hind  lobe,  convex  outwards  and  concave 
inwards,  as  in  Palceotherium.  The  ulna  is  complete  and 
much  larger  than  in  any  of  the  Equidce,  while  it  is  more 
slender  than  in  most  of  the  true  Palasotheria ;  it  is 
fixedly  united,  but  not  ankylosed,  with  the  radius. 
There  are  three  toes  in  the  fore  limb,  the  outer  ones 
being  slender,  but  less  attenuated  than  in  the  Equidce. 
The  femur  is  more  like  that  of  the  Palceotheria  than  that 
of  the  horse,  and  has  only  a  small  depression  above  its 
outer  condyle  in  the  place  of  the  great  fossa  which  is  so 
obvious  in  the  Equidce.  The  fibula  is  distinct,  but  very 


196  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [ix. 

slender,  and  its  distal  end  is  ankylosed  with  the  tibia. 
There  are  three  toes  on  the  hind  foot  having  similar  pro- 
portions to  those  on  the  fore  foot.  The  principal  meta- 
carpal  and  metatarsal  bones  are  flatter  than  they  are  in 
any  of  the  Equidce  ;  and  the  metacarpal  bones  are  longer 
than  the  metatarsals,  as  in  the  Palceotlieria. 

In  its  general  form,  Plagioloplius  resembles  a  very 
small  and  slender  horse,1  and  is  totally  unlike  the 
reluctant,  pig-like  creature  depicted  in  Cuvier's  resto- 
ration of  his  Palceotlierium  minus  in  the  "  Ossemens 
Fossiles." 

It  would  be  hazardous  to  say  that  Plagiolophus  is  the 
exact  radical  form  of  the  Equine  quadrupeds ;  but  I  do 
not  think  there  can  be  any  reasonable  doubt  that  the 
latter  animals  have  resulted  from  the  modification  of 
some  quadruped  similar  to  Plagiolophus. 

We  have  thus  arrived  at  the  Middle  Eocene  formation, 
and  yet  have  traced  back  the  Horses  only  to  a  three-toed 
stock  ;  but  these  three-toed  forms,  no  less  than  the  Equine 
quadrupeds  themselves,  present  rudiments  of  the  two 
other  toes  which  appertain  to  what  I  have  termed  the 
"average"  quadruped.  If  the  expectation  raised  by  the 
splints  of  the  Horses  that,  in  some  ancestor  of  the  Horses, 
these  splints  would  be  found  to  be  complete  digits,  has 
been  verified,  we  are  furnished  with  very  strong  reasons 
for  looking  for  a  no  less  complete  verification  of  the 
expectation  that  the  three-toed  Plagiolophus-like  "avus" 
of  the  horse  must  have  had  a  five-toed  "  atavus  "  at  some 
earlier  period. 

No  such  five-toed  "  atavus,"  however,  has  yet  made  its 
appearance  among  the  few  middle  and  older  Eocene 
Mammalia  which  are  known. 

1  Such,  at  least,  is  the  conclusion  suggested  by  the  proportions  of  ihe  skeleton 
figured  by  Cuvier  and  De  Blainville  ;  but  perhaps  something  between  a  Horse 
and  an  Agouti  would  be  nearest  the  mark. 


ix.]  PALAEONTOLOGY  AND  EVOLUTION.  197 

Another  series  of  closely  affiliated  forms,  though  the 
evidence  they  afford  is  perhaps  less  complete  than  that 
of  the  Equine  series,  is  presented  to  us  by  the  Dicho- 
bune  of  the  Eocene  epoch,  the  Cainotherium  of  the 
Miocene,  and  the  Tragulidce,  or  so-called  "  Musk-deer/' 
of  the  present  day. 

The  Tragulidce  have  no  incisors  in  the  upper  jaw,  and 
only  six  grinding-teeth  on  each  side  of  each  jaw ;  while 
the  canine  is  moved  up  to  the  outer  incisor,  and  there  is 
a  diastema,  in  the  lower  jaw.  There  are  four  complete 
toes  on  the  hind  foot,  but  the  middle  metatarsals  usually 
become,  sooner  or  later,  ankylosed  into  a  cannon  bone. 
The  navicular  and  the  cuboid  unite,  and  the  distal  end 
of  the  fibula  is  ankylosed  with  the  tibia. 

In  Cainotherium  and  Dicliobune  the  upper  incisors  are 
fully  developed.  There  are  seven  grinders;  the  teeth 
form  a  continuous  series  without  a  diastema.  The  meta- 
tarsals, the  navicular  and  cuboid,  and  the  distal  end  of 
the  fibula,  remain  free.  In  the  Cainotherium,  also,  the 
second  metacarpal  is  developed,  but  is  much  shorter  than 
the  third,  while  the  fifth  is  absent  or  rudimentary.  In 
this  respect  it  resembles  Anoplotherium  secundarium. 
This  circumstance,  and  the  peculiar  pattern  of  the  upper 
molars  in  Cainotherium,  lead  me  to  hesitate  in  considering 
it  as  the  actual  ancestor  of  the  modern  Tragulidce.  If 
Dicliobune  has  a  four-toed  fore  foot  (though  I  am  inclined 
to  suspect  that  it  resembles  Cainotherium),  it  will  be  a 
better  representative  of  the  oldest  forms  of  the  Traguline 
series;  but  Dicliobune  occurs  in  the  Middle  Eocene, 
and  is,  in  fact,  the  oldest  known  artiodactyle  mammal. 
Where,  then,  must  we  look  for  its  five-toed  ancestor  ? 

If  we  follow  down  other  lines  of  recent  and  tertiary 
Ungulata,  the  same  question  presents  itself.  The  Pigs 
are  traceable  back  through  the  Miocene  epoch  to  the 
Upper  Eocene,  where  they  appear  in  the  two  well-marked 


198  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [ix, 

forms   of  Hyopotamus  and   Cliceropolamus ;  but    Hyo- 
potamus appears  to  have  had  only  two  toes. 

Again,  all  the  great  groups  of  the  Ruminants,  the 
Bovida,  Antilopidce,  Camelopardalidce,  and  Cervidce, 
are  represented  in  the  Miocene  epoch,  and  so  are  the 
Camels.  The  Upper  Eocene  Anoplotlierium,  which  is  in- 
tercalary between  the  Pigs  and  the  Tragulidce,  has  only 
two  or,  at  most,  three  toes.  Among  the  scanty  mammals 
of  the  Lower  Eocene  formation  we  have  the  perisso- 
dactyle  Ungulata  represented  by  Corypliodon,  Hyra~ 
cotherium,  and  Plioloplius.  Suppose  for  a  moment,  for 
the  sake  of  following  out  the  argument,  that  Plioloplius 
represents  the  primary  stock  of  the  Perissodactyles,  and 
Dichobune  that  of  the  Artiodactyles  (though  I  am  far 
from  saying  that  such  is  the  case),  then  we  find,  in  the 
earliest  fauna  of  the  Eocene  epoch  to  which  our  investiga- 
tions carry  us,  the  two  divisions  of  the  Ungulata  com- 
pletely differentiated,  and  no  trace  of  any  common  stock 
of  both,  or  of  five-toed  predecessors  to  either.  "With  the 
case  of  the  Horses  before  us,  justifying  a  belief  in  the 
production  of  new  animal  forms  by  modification  of  old 
ones,  I  see  no  escape  from  the  necessity  of  seeking  for 
these  ancestors  of  the  Ungulata  beyond  the  limits  of  the 
Tertiary  formations. 

I  could  as  soon  admit  special  creation,  at  once,  as 
suppose  that  the  Perissodactyles  and  Artiodactyles  had 
no  five-toed  ancestors.  And  when  we  consider  how  large 
a  portion  of  the  Tertiary  period  elapsed  before  Anchi- 
ihemum  was  converted  into  Equus,  it  is  difficult  to  escape 
the  conclusion  that  a  large  proportion  of  time  anterior  to 
the  Tertiary  period  must  have  been  expended  in  convert- 
ing the  common  stock  of  the  Ungulata  into  Perisso- 
dactyles and  Artiodactyles. 

The  same  moral  is  inculcated  by  the  study  of  every 
other  order  of  Tertiary  monodelphous  Mammalia.  Each 


ix.J  PALAEONTOLOGY  AND  EVOLUTION.  109 

of  these  orders  is  represented  in  the  Miocene  epoch  : 
the  Eocene  formation,  as  I  have  already  said,  contains 
Cheiroptera,  Insectivora,  Rodentia,  Ungulata,  Carnivora, 
and  Cetacea.  But  the  Cheiroptera  are  extreme  modifica- 
tions of  the  Insectivora,  just  as  the  Cetacea  are  extreme 
modifications  of  the  Carnivorous  type ;  and  therefore  it 
is  to  my  mind  incredible  that  monodelphous  Insecti- 
vora and  Carnivora  should  not  have  been  abundantly 
developed,  along  with  Ungulata,  in  the  Mesozoic  epoch. 
But  if  this  be  the  case,  how  much  further  back  must 
we  go  to  find  the  common  stock  of  the  monodelphous 
Mammalia  ?  As  to  the  Didelphia,  if  we  may  trust  the 
evidence  which  seems  to  be  afforded  by  their  very  scanty 
remains,  a  Hypsiprymnoid  form  existed  at  the  epoch  of 
the  Trias,  contemporaneously  with  a  Carnivorous  form.  At 
the  epoch  of  the  Trias,  therefore,  the  Marsupialia  must 
have, already  existed  long  enough  to  have  become  differ- 
entiated into  carnivorous  and  herbivorous  forms.  But 
the  Monotremata  are  lower  forms  than  the  Didelphia, 
which  last  are  intercalary  between  the  Ornithodelphia 
and  the  Monodelphia.  To  what  point  of  the  Palaeozoic 
epoch,  then,  must  we,  upon  any  rational  estimate,  rele- 
gate the  origin  of  the  Monotremata  ? 

The  investigation  of  the  occurrence  of  the  classes 
and  of  the  orders  of  the  Sauropsida  in  time  points  in 
exactly  the  same  direction.  If,  as  there  is  great  reason 
to  believe,  true  Birds  existed  in  the  Triassic  epoch,  the 
ornithoscelidous  forms  by  which  Eeptiles  passed  into 
Birds  must  have  preceded  them.  In  fact  there  is,  even 
at  present,  considerable  ground  for  suspecting  the  exist- 
ence of  Dinosauria  in  the  Permian  formations ;  but,  in 
that  case,  lizards  must  be  of  still  earlier  date.  And  if 
the  very  small  differences  which  are  observable  between 
the  Crocodilia  of  the  older  Mesozoic  formations  and 
those  of  the  present  day  furnish  any  sort  of  approxi- 


200  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [ix. 

mation  towards  an  estimate  of  the  average  rate  of  change 
among  the  Sauropsida,  it  is  almost  appalling  to  reflect 
how  far  back  in  Palaeozoic  times  we  must  go,  before  we 
can  hope  to  arrive  at  that  common  stock  from  which 
the  Crocodilia,  Lacertilia,  Ornithoscelida,  and  Plesio- 
sauria,  which  had  attained  so  great  a  development  in 
the  Triassic  epoch,  must  have  been  derived. 

The  Amphibia  and  Pisces  tell  the  same  story.  There 
is  not  a  single  class  of  vertebrated  animals  which,  when 
it  first  appears,  is  represented  by  analogues  of  the  lowest 
known  members  of  the  same  class.  Therefore,  if  there  is 
any  truth  in  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  every  class  must 
be  vastly  older  than  the  first  record  of  its  appearance 
upon  the  surface  of  the  globe.  But  if  considerations  of 
this  kind  compel  us  to  place  the  origin  of  vertebrated 
animals  at  a  period  sufficiently  distant  from  the  Upper 
Silurian,  in  which  the  first  Elasmobranchs  and  Ganoids 
occur,  to  allow  of  the  evolution  of  such  fishes  as  these 
from  a  Vertebrate  as  simple  as  the  Ampliioxus,  I  can 
only  repeat  that  it  is  appalling  to  speculate  upon  the 
extent  to  which  that  origin  must  have  preceded  the 
epoch  of  the  first  recorded  appearance  of  vertebrate  life. 

Such  is  the  further  commentary  which  I  have  to  offer 
upon  the  statement  of  the  chief  results  of  palaeontology 
which  I  formerly  ventured  to  lay  before  you. 

But  the  growth  of  knowledge  in  the  interval  makes 
me  conscious  of  an  omission  of  considerable  moment  in 
that  statement,  inasmuch  as  it  contains  no  reference  to 
the  bearings  of  palaeontology  upon  the  theory  of  the 
distribution  of  life ;  nor  takes  note  of  the  remarkable 
manner  in  which  the  facts  of  distribution,  in  present 
and.  past  times,  accord  with  the  doctrine  of  evolution, 
especially  in  regard  to  land  animals. 

Tha,t  connection  between  palaeontology  and  geology 


ix.]  PALAEONTOLOGY  AND  EVOLUTION.  201 

and  the  present  distribution  of  terrestrial  animals,  which 
so  strikingly  impressed  Mr.  Darwin,  thirty  years  ago,  as 
to  lead  him  to  speak  of  a  "  law  of  succession  of  types/' 
and  of  the  wonderful  relationship  on  the  same  continent 
between  the  dead  and  the  living,  has  recently  received 
much  elucidation  from  the  researches  of  Gaudry,  of 
Butimeyer,  of  Leidy,  and  of  Alphonse  Milne-Ed  wards, 
taken  in  connection  with  the  earlier  labours  of  our 
lamented  colleague  Falconer;  and  it  has  been  instruc- 
tively discussed  in  the  thoughtful  and  ingenious  work  of 
Mr.  Andrew  Murray  "  On  the  Geographical  Distribution 
of  Mammals."  l 

I  propose  to  lay  before  you,  as  briefly  as  I  can,  the 
ideas  to  which  a  long  consideration  of  the  subject  has 
given  rise  in  my  own  mind. 

If  the  doctrine  of  evolution  is  sound,  one  of  its  imme- 
diate consequences  clearly  is,  that  the  present  distribu- 
tion of  life  upon  the  globe  is  the  product  of  two  factors, 
the  one  _being  the  distribution  which  obtained  in  the 
immediately  preceding  epoch,  and  the  other  the  character 
and  the  extent  of  the  changes  which  have  taken  place  in 
physical  geography  between  the  one  epoch  and  the  other  ; 
or,  to  put  the  matter  in  another  way,  the  Fauna  and  Flora 
of  any  given  area,  in  any  given  epoch,  can  consist  only 
of  such  forms  of  life  as  are  directly  descended  from  those 
which  constituted  the  Fauna  and  Flora  of  the  same  area 
in  the  immediately  preceding  epoch,  unless  the  physical 
geography  (under  which  I  include  climatal  conditions) 
of  the  area  has  been  so  altered  as  to  give  rise  to  immi- 
gration of  living  forms  from  some  other  area. 

i  The  paper  "On  the  Form  and  Distribution  of  the  Land-tracts  during  the 
Secondary  and  Te^iary  Periods  respectively ;  and  on  the  Effect  upon  Animal 
Life  which  great  Changes  in  Geographical  Configuration  have  probably  pro- 
duced," by  Mr.  Searles  V.  Wood,  jun.,  which  was  published  in  the  Philoso- 
phical Magazine,  in  1862,  was  unknown  to  me  when  this  Address  was  written. 
It  is  well  worthy  of  the  most  careful  study. 


202  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [i±. 

The  evolutionist,  therefore,  is  bound  to  grapple  with 
the  following  problem  whenever  it  is  clearly  put  before 
him: — Here  are  the  Faunae  of  the  same  area  during 
successive  epochs.  Show  good  cause  for  believing 
either  that  these  Faunae  have  been  derived  from  one 
another  by  gradual  modification,  or  that  the  Faunae 
have  reached  the  area  in  question  by  migration  from 
some  area  in  which  they  have  undergone  their  deve- 
lopment. 

I  propose  to  attempt  to  deal  with  this  problem,  so  far 
as  it  is  exemplified  by  the  distribution  of  the  terrestrial 
Vertebrata,  and  I  shall  endeavour  to  show  you  that > it  is 
capable  of  solution  in  a  sense  entirely  favourable  to  the 
doctrine  of  evolution. 

I  have  elsewhere1  stated  at  length  the  reasons  which 
lead  me  to  recognize  four  primary  distributional  provinces 
for  the  terrestrial  Vertebrata  in  the  present  world,  namely, 
— first,  the  Novozelanian,  or  New-Zealand  province ; 
secondly,  the  Australian  province,  including  Australia, 
Tasmania,  and  the  Negrito  Islands  ;  thirdly,  Austro- 
Columbia,  or  South  America  plus  North  America  as  far 
as  Mexico ;  and  fourthly,  the  rest  of  the  world,  or  Arc- 
togcea,  in  which  province  America  north  of  Mexico  con- 
stitutes one  sub-province,  Africa  south  of  the  Sahara  a 
second,  Hindostan  a  third,  and  the  remainder  of  the  Old 
World  a  fourth. 

Now  the  truth  which  Mr.  Darwin  perceived  and  pro.- 
mulgated  as  "the  law  of  the  succession  of  types"  is, 
that,  in  all  these  provinces,  the  animals  found  in  Plio- 
cene or  later  deposits  are  closely  affined  to  those  which 
now  inhabit  the  same  provinces ;  and  that,  conversely, 
the  forms  characteristic  of  other  provinces  are  absent. 
North  and  South  America,  perhaps,  present  one  or 

1  "  On  the  Classification  and  Distribution  of  the  Alectoromorphae ; "  Proceed- 
ings of  the  Zoological  Society.  1868. 


LTY» 

ix.]  PALAEONTOLOGY  A  1\  l>  EVOLUTION.  /  203 

>k?  if  IF  o  lO^z^ 

two  exceptions  to  the  last  rule,  but  tJu-y  aiv  readily 
susceptible  of  explanation.  Thus,  in  Australia,  the 
later  Tertiary  mammals  are  marsupials  (possibly  with 
exception  of  the  Dog  and  a  Eodent  or  two,  as  at 
present).  In  Austro-Columbia  the  later  Tertiary  fauna 
exhibits  numerous  and  varied  forms  of  Platyrrhine  Apes, 
Kodents,  Cats,  Dogs,  Stags,  Edentata,  and  Opossums ; 
but,  as  at  present,  no  Catarrhine  Apes,  no  Lemurs,  no 
Insectivora,  Oxen,  Antelopes,  Ehinoceroses,  nor  Didel- 
pliia,  other  than  Opossums.  And  in  the  wide-spread 
Arctogseal  province,  the  Pliocene  and  later  mammals 
belong  to  the  same  groups  as  those  which  now  exist  in 
the  province.  The  law  of  succession  of  types,  therefore, 
holds  good  for  the  present  epoch  as  compared  with  its 
predecessor.  Does  it  equally  well  apply  to  the  Pliocene 
fauna  when  we  compare  it  with  that  of  the  Miocene 
epoch  I  By  great  good  fortune,  an  extensive  mammalian 
fauna  of  the  latter  epoch  has  now  become  known,  in  four 
very  distant  portions  of  the  Arctogaeal  province  which 
do  not  differ  greatly  in  latitude.  Thus  Falconer  and 
Cautley  have  made  known  the  fauna  of  the  sub-Hima- 
layas and  the  Perim  Islands  ;  Gaudry  that  of  Attica  ; 
many  observers  that  of  Central  Europe  and  France ; 
and  Leidy  that  of  Nebraska,  on  the  eastern  flank  of 
the  Eocky  Mountains.  The  results  are  very  striking. 
The  total  Miocene  fauna  comprises  many  genera,  and 
species  of  Catarrhine  Apes,  of  Bats,  of  Insectivora ;  of 
Arctogseal  types  of  Rodentia;  of  Proboscidea;  of  equine, 
rhinocerotic,  and  tapirine  quadrupeds ;  of  cameline, 
bovine,  antilopine,  cervine,  and  traguline  Euminants ;  of 
Pigs  and  Hippopotamuses ;  of  Viverridce  and  Hycenida 
among  other  Carnivora ;  with  Edentata  allied  to  the 
Arctogseal  Orycteropus  and  Manis,  and  not  to  the 
Austro-Columbian  Edentates.  The  only  type  present 
in  the  Miocene,  but  absent  in  the  existing,  fauna  of 
10 


204  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [ix. 

Eastern  Arctogaea,  is  that  of  the  Didelphida,  which, 
however,  remains  in  North  America. 

But  it  is  very  remarkable  that  while  the  Miocene  fauna 
of  the  Arctogseal  province,  as  a  whole,  is  of  the  same 
character  as  the  existing  fauna  of  the  same  province, 
as  a  whole,  the  component  elements  of  the  fauna  were 
differently  associated.  In  the  Miocene  epoch,  North 
America  possessed  Elephants,  Horses,  Bhinoceroses, 
and  a  great  number  and  variety  of  Euminants  and 
Pigs,  which  are  absent  in  the  present  indigenous 
fauna  ;  Europe  had  its  Apes,  Elephants,  Khinoceroses, 
Tapirs,  Musk-deer,  Giraffes,  Hyaenas,  great  Cats,  Eden- 
tates, and  Opossum-like  Marsupials,  which  have  equally 
vanished  from  its  present  fauna  ;  and  in  Northern  India, 
the  African  types  of  Hippopotamuses,  Giraffes,  and  Ele- 
phants were  mixed  up  with  what  are  now  the  Asiatic 
types  of  the  latter,  and  with  Camels,  and  Semnopithe- 
cine  and  Pithecine  Apes  of  no  less  distinctly  Asiatic 
forms. 

In  fact  the  Miocene  mammalian  fauna  of  Europe  and 
the  Himalayan  regions  contains,  associated  together,  the 
types  which  are  at  present  separately  located  in  the 
South-African  and  Indian  sub-provinces  of  Arctogsea. 
Now  there  is  every  reason  to  believe,  on  other  grounds, 
that  both  Hindostan,  south  of  the  Ganges,  and  Africa, 
south  of  the  Sahara,  were  separated  by  a  wide  sea  from 
Europe  and  North  Asia  during  the  Middle  and  Upper 
Eocene  epochs.  Hence  it  becomes  highly  probable  that 
the  well-known  similarities,  and  no  less  remarkable  dif- 
ferences, between  the  present  Faunae  of  India  and  South 
Africa  have  arisen  in  some  such  fashion  as  the  following. 
Some  time  during  the  Miocene  epoch,  possibly  when  the 
Himalayan  chain  was  elevated,  the  bottom  of  the  num- 
mulitic  sea  was  upheaved  and  converted  into  dry  land, 
in  the  direction  of  a  line  extending  from  Abyssinia  to 


ix.]  PALEONTOLOGY  AND  EVOLUTION.  205 

the  mouth  of  the  Ganges.  By  this  means,  the  Dekhan 
on  the  one  hand,  and  South  Africa  on  the  other,  became 
connected  with  the  Miocene  dry  land  and  with  one 
another.  The  Miocene  mammals  spread  gradually  over 
this  intermediate  dry  land ;  and  if  the  condition  of  its 
eastern  and  western  ends  offered  as  wide  contrasts  as 
the  valleys  of  the  Ganges  and  Arabia  do  now,  many 
forms  which  made  their  way  into  Africa  must  have 
been  different  from  those  which  reachdd  the  Dekhan, 
while  others  might  pass  into  both  these  sub-provinces. 

That  there  was  a  continuity  of  dry  land  between 
Europe  and  North  America  during  the  Miocene  epoch, 
appears  to  me  to  be  a  necessary  consequence  of  the  fact 
that  many  genera  of  terrestrial  mammals,  such  as  Castor, 
Hystrix,  Eleplias,  Mastodon,  Equus,  Hipparion,  Anchi- 
therium,  Rhinoceros,  Cervus,  Amphicyon,  Hycenarctos, 
and  Macliairodus,  are  common  to  the  Miocene  forma- 
tions of  the  two  areas,  and  have  as  yet  been  found 
(except  perhaps  Anchitherium)  in  no  deposit  of  earlier 
age.  Whether  this  connection  took  place  by  the  east, 
or  by  the  west,  or  by  both  sides  of  the  Old  World, 
there  is  at  present  no  certain  evidence,  and  the  question 
is  immaterial  to  the  present  argument ;  but,  as  there  are 
good  grounds  for  the  belief  that  the  Australian  province 
and  the  Indian  and  South- African  sub-provinces  were 
separated  by  sea  from  the  rest  of  Arctogoea  before  the 
Miocene  epoch,  so  it  has  been  rendered  no  less  probable, 
by  the  investigations  of  Mr.  Carrick  Moore  and  Pro- 
fessor Duncan,  that  Austro-Columbia  was  separated  by 
sea  from  North  America  during  a  large  part  of  the 
Miocene  epoch. 

It  is  unfortunate  that  we  have  no  knowledge  of  the 

O 

Miocene  mammalian  fauna  of  the  Australian  and  Austro- 
Columbian  provinces ;  but,  seeing  that  not  a  trace  of  a 
Platyrrhine  Ape,  of  a  Procyonine  Carnivore,  of  a  charac- 


206  CEITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [ix. 

teristically  South -American  Rodent,  of  a  Sloth,  an  Arma- 
dillo, or  an  Ant-eater  has  yet  been  found  in  Miocene 
deposits  of  Arctogsea,  I  cannot  doubt  that  they  already 
existed  in  the  Miocene  Austro-Columbian  province. 

Nor  is  it  less  probable  that  the  characteristic  types  of 
Australian  Mammalia  were  already  developed  in  that 
region  in  Miocene  times. 

But  Austro-Columbia  presents  difficulties  from  which 
Australia  is  free ;  Camelidce  and  Tapiridce  are  now 
indigenous  in  South  America  as  they  are  in  Arctogsea ; 
and,  among  the  Pliocene  Austro-Columbian  mammals, 
the  Austro-Columbian  genera  Equus,  Mastodon,  and 
Machairodus  are  numbered.  Are  these  Postmiocene 
immigrants,  or  Prsemiocene  natives  ? 

Still  more  perplexing  are  the  strange  and  interesting 
forms  Toxodon,  Macrauchenia,  Typotherium,  and  a 
new  Anoplotherioid  mammal  (Homalodotherium)  which 
Dr.  Cunningham  sent  over  to  me  some  time  ago  from 
Patagonia.  I  confess  I  am  strongly  inclined  to  surmise 
that  these  last,  at  any  rate,  are  remnants  of  the  popula- 
tion of  Austro-Columbia  before  the  Miocene  epoch,  and 
were  not  derived  from  Arctogaea  by  way  of  the  north 
and  east. 

The  fact  that  this  immense  fauna  of  Miocene  Arctogaea 
is  now  fully  and  richly  represented  only  in  India  and  in 
South  Africa,  while  it  is  shrunk  and  depauperized  in 
North  Asia,  Europe,  and  North  America,  becomes  at  once 
intelligible,  if  we  suppose  that  India  and  South  Africa 
had  but  a  scanty  mammalian  population  before  the 
Miocene  immigration,  while  the  conditions  were  highly 
favourable  to  the  new  comers.  It  is  to  be  supposed  that 
these  new  regions  offered  themselves  to  the  Miocene 
Ungulates,  as  South  America  and  Australia  offered  them- 
selves to  the  cattle,  sheep,  and  horses  of  modern  colonists. 
But,  after  these  great  areas  were  thus  peopled,  came  the 


ix.j  PALEONTOLOGY  AND  EVOLUTION.  207 

Glacial  epoch,  during  which  the  excessive  cold,  to  say 
nothing  of  depression  and  ice-covering,  must  have  almost 
depopulated  all  the  northern  parts  of  Arctogsea,  destroy- 
ing all  the  higher  mammalian  forms,  except  those  which, 
like  the  Elephant  and   Ehinoceros,   could   adjust  their 
coats  to  the  altered  conditions.     Even  these  must  have 
been  driven  away  from  the  greater  part  of  the  area ;  only 
those  Miocene   mammals  which  had  passed  into  Hin- 
dostan  and  into  South  Africa  would  escape  decimation 
by  such  changes  in  the  physical  geography  of  Aretogsea. 
And   when   the   northern   hemisphere    passed  into    its 
present  condition,  these  lost  tribes  of  the  Miocene  Fauna 
were  hemmed  by  the  Himalayas,  the  Sahara,  the  Ked  Sea, 
and  the  Arabian  deserts,  within  their  present  boundaries. 
Now,  on  the  hypothesis  of  evolution,  there  is  no  sort 
of  difficulty  in  admitting  that  the  differences  between  the 
Miocene  forms  of  the  mammalian  Fauna  and  those  which 
exist  at  present  are  the  results  of  gradual  modification  ; 
and,  since  such  differences  in  distribution  as  obtain  are 
readily  explained  by  the  changes  which  have  taken  place 
in  the  physical  geography  of  the  world  since  the  Miocene 
epoch,  it  is  clear  that  the  result  of  the  comparison  of  the 
Miocene  and  present  Faunae  is  distinctly  in  favour  of 
evolution.     Indeed  I  may  go  further.     I  may  say  that 
the  hypothesis  of  evolution  explains  the  facts  of  Miocene, 
Pliocene,  and  Eecent   distribution,    and   that  no  other 
supposition  even  pretends  to  account  for  them.     It  is, 
indeed,  a  conceivable  supposition  that  every  species  of 
Khinoceros  and  every  species  of  Hyaena,  in   the   long 
succession  of  forms  between  the  Miocene  and  the  present 
species,  was  separately  constructed  out  of  dust,  or  out 
of  nothing,  by  supernatural  power  ;  but  until  I  receive 
distinct  evidence  of  the  fact,  I  refuse  to  run  the  risk  of 
insulting  any  sane  man  by  supposing  that  he  seriously 
holds  such  a  notion. 


208  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [ix. 

Let  us  now  take  a  step  further  back  in  time,  and 
inquire  into  the  relations  between  the  Miocene  Fauna 
and  its  predecessor  of  the  Upper  Eocene  formation. 

Here  it  is  to  be  regretted  that  our  materials  for  forming 
a  judgment  are  nothing  to  be  compared  in  point  of  extent 
or  variety  with  those  which  are  yielded  by  the  Miocene 
strata.  However,  what  we  do  know  of  this  Upper  Eocene 
Fauna  of  Europe  gives  sufficient  positive  information  to 
enable  us  to  draw  some  tolerably  safe  inferences.  It  has 
yielded  representatives  of  Insectivora,  of  Cheiroptera, 
of  Rodentia,  of  Carnivora,  of  artiodactyle  and  perisso- 
dactyle  Uhgulata,  and  of  opossum-like  Marsupials.  No 
Australian  type  of  Marsupial  has  been  discovered  in  the 
Upper  Eocene  strata,  nor  any  Edentate  mammal.  The 
genera  (except  perhaps  in  the  case  of  some  of  the  Insecti- 
vora, Cheiroptera,  and  Rodentia)  are  diiferent  from  those 
of  the  Miocene  epoch,  but  present  a  remarkable  general 
similarity  to  the  Miocene  and  recent  genera.  In  several 
cases,  as  I  have  already  shown,  it  has  now  been  clearly 
made  out  that  the  relation  between  the  Eocene  and 
Miocene  forms  is  such  that  the  Eocene  form  is  the  less 
specialized  ;  while  its  Miocene  ally  is  more  so,  and  the 
specialization  reaches  its  maximum  in  the  recent  forms 
of  the  same  type. 

So  far  as  the  Upper  Eocene  and  the  Miocene  Mamma- 
lian Faunae  are  comparable,  their  relations  are  such  as  in 
no  way  to  oppose  the  hypothesis  that  the  older  are  the 
progenitors  of  the  more  recent  forms,  while,  in  some 
cases,  they  distinctly  favour  that  hypothesis.  The  period 
in  time  and  the  changes  in  physical  geography  repre- 
sented by  the  nummulitic  deposits  are  undoubtedly  very 
great,  while  the  remains  of  Middle  Eocene  and  Older 
Eocene  Mammals  are  comparatively  few.  The  general 
facies  of  the  Middle  Eocene  Fauna,  however,  is  quite 
that  of  the  Upper.  The  Older  Eocene  pre-nummulitic 


ix.]  PALEONTOLOGY  AND  EVOLUTION.  209 

mammalian  Fauna  contains  Bats,  two  genera  of  Garni- 
vora,  three  genera  of  Ungulata  (probably  all  perisso- 
clactyle),  and  a  didelphid  Marsupial ;  all  these  forms, 
except  perhaps  the  Bat  and  the  Opossum,  belong  to 
genera  which  are  not  known  to  occur  out  of  the  Lower 
Eocene  formation.  The  Coryphodon  appears  to  have 
been  allied  to  the  Miocene  and  later  Tapirs,  while  Pliolo- 
phns,  in  its  skull  and  dentition,  curiously  partakes  of 
both  artiodactyle  and  perissodactyle  characters ;  the 
third  trochanter  upon  its  femur,  and  its  three-toed  hind 
foot,  however,  appear  definitely  to  fix  its  position  in  the 
latter  division. 

There  is  nothing,  then,  in  what  is  known  of  the  older 
Eocene  mammals  of  the  Arctogaeal  province  to  forbid 
the  supposition  that  they  stood  in  an  ancestral  relation 
to  those  of  the  Calcaire  Grossier  and  the  Gypsum  of 
the  Paris  basin,  and  that  our  present  fauna,  therefore, 
is  directly  derived  from  that  which  already  existed  in 
Arctogoea  at  the  commencement  of  the  Tertiary  period. 
But  if  we  now  cross  the  frontier  between  the  Caino- 
zoic  and  the  Mesozoic  faunae,  as  they  are  preserved 
within  the  Arctogseal  area,  we  meet  with  an  astound- 
ing change,  and  what  appears  to  be  a  complete  and 
unmistakable  break  in  the  line  of  biological  continuity. 

Among  the  twelve  or  fourteen  species  of  Mammalia 
which  are  said  to  have  been  found  in  the  Purbecks,  not 
one  is  a  member  of  the  orders  Cheiroptera,  Rodentia, 
Ungulata,  or  Carnivora,  which  are  so  well  represented 
in  the  Tertiaries.  No  Insectivora  are  certainly  known, 
nor  any  opossum-like  Marsupials.  Thus  there  is  a  vast 
negative  difference  between  the  Cainozoic  and  the  Meso- 
zoic mammalian  faunae  of  Europe.  But  there  is  a  still 
more  important  positive  difference,  inasmuch  as  all  these 
Mammalia  appear  to  be  Marsupials  belonging  to  Aus- 
tralian groups,  and  thus  appertaining  to  a  different 


210  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [ix. 

distributional  province  from  the  Eocene  and  Miocene 
marsupials,  which  are  Austro- Columbian.  So  far  as  the 
imperfect  materials  which  exist  enable  a  judgment  to  be 
formed,  the  same  law  appears  to  have  held  good  for  all 
the  earlier  Mesozoic  Mammalia.  Of  the  Stonesfield 
slate  mammals,  one,  Amphitherium,  has  a  definitely 
Australian  character ;  one,  Phascolotherium,  may  be 
either  Dasyurid  or  Didelphine  ;  of  a  third,  Stereognathus, 
nothing  can  at  present  be  said.  The  two  mammals  of 
the  Trias,  also,  appear  to  belong  to  Australian  groups. 

Every  one  is  aware  of  the  many  curious  points  of 
resemblance  between  the  marine  fauna  of  the  European 
Mesozoic  rocks  and  that  which  now  exists  in  Australia. 
But  if  there  was  this  Australian  facies  about  both  the 
terrestrial  and  the  marine  faunse  of  Mesozoic  Europe, 
and  if  there  is  this  unaccountable  and  immense  break 
between  the  fauna  of  Mesozoic  and  that  of  Tertiary 
Europe,  is  it  not  a  very  obvious  suggestion  that,  in  the 
Mesozoic  epoch,  the  Australian  province  included  Europe, 
and  that  the  Arctogseal  province  was  contained  within 
other  limits  ?  The  Arctogeeal  province  is  at  present 
enormous,  while  the  Australian  is  relatively  small.  Why 
should  not  these  proportions  have  been  different  during 
the  Mesozoic  epoch  1 

Thus  I  am  led  to  think  that  by  far  the  simplest  and 
most  rational  mode  of  accounting  for  the  great  change 
which  took  place  in  the  living  inhabitants  of  the  European 
area  at  the  end  of  the  Mesozoic  epoch,  is  the  supposition 
that  it  arose  from  a  vast  alteration  of  the  physical 

Geography  of  the  globe ;  whereby  an  area  long  tenanted 
y  Cainozoic  forms  was  brought  into  such  relations  with 
the  European  area  that  migration  from  the  one  to  the 
other  became  possible,  and  took  place  on  a  great  scale. 

This  supposition  relieves  us,  at  once,  from  the  difficulty 
in  which  we  were  left,  some  time  ago,  by  the  arguments 


ix.]  PALEONTOLOGY  AND  EVOLUTION.  211 

which  I  used  to  demonstrate  the  necessity  of  the  existence 
of  all  the  great  types  of  the  Eocene  epoch  in  some  ante- 
cedent period. 

It  is  this  Mesozoic  continent  (which  may  well  have 
lain  in  the  neighbourhood  of  what  are  now  the  shores  of 
the  North  Pacific  Ocean)  which  I  suppose  to  have  been 
occupied  by  the  Mesozoic  Monodelphia ;  and  it  is  in  this 
region  that  I  conceive  they  must  have  gone  through  the 
long  series  of  changes  by  which  they  were  specialized 
into  the  forms  which  we  refer  to  different  orders.  I 
think  it  very  probable  that  what  is  now  South  America 
may  have  received  the  characteristic  elements  of  its 
mammalian  fauna  during  the  Mesozoic  epoch  ;  and  there 
can  be  little  doubt  that  the  general  nature  of  the  change 
which  took  place  at  the  end  of  the  Mesozoic  epoch  in 
Europe  was  the  upheaval  of  the  eastern  and  northern 
regions  of  the  Mesozoic  sea-bottom  into  a  westward 
extension  of  the  Mesozoic  continent,  over  which  the 
mammalian  fauna,  by  which  it  was  already  peopled, 
gradually  spread.  This  invasion  of  the  land  was  prefaced 
by  a  previous  invasion  of  the  Cretaceous  sea  by  modern 
forms  of  mollusca  and  fish. 

It  is  easy  to  imagine  how  an  analogous  change  might 
come  about  in  the  existing  world.  There  is,  at  present, 
a  great  difference  between  the  fauna  of  the  Polynesian 
Islands  and  that  of  the  west  coast  of  America.  The 
animals  which  are  leaving  their  spoils  in  the  deposits 
now  forming  in  these  localities  are  widely  different. 
Hence,  if  a  gradual  shifting  of  the  deep  sea,  which  at 
present  bars  migration  between  the  easternmost  of  these 
islands  and  America,  took  place  to  the  westward,  while 
the  American  side  of  the  sea-bottom  was  gradually 
upheaved,  the  palaeontologist  of  the  future  would  find, 
over  the  Pacific  area,  exactly  such  a  change  as  I  am 
supposing  to  have  occurred  in  the  North -Atlantic  area 


212  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [tx. 

at  the  close  of  the  Mesozoic  period.  An  Australian 
fauna  would  be  found  underlying  an  American  fauna, 
and  the  transition  from  the  one  to  the  other  would  be  as 
abrupt  as  that  between  the  Chalk  and  lower  Tertiaries  ; 
and  as  the  drainage-area  of  the  newly  formed  extension 
of  the  American  continent  gave  rise  to  rivers  and  lakes, 
the  mammals  mired  in  their  mud  would  differ  from  those 
of  like  deposits  on  the  Australian  side,  just  as  the  Eocene 
mammals  differ  from  those  of  the  Purbecks. 

How  do  similar  reasonings  apply  to  the  other  great 
change  of  life — that  which  took  place  at  the  end  of  the 
Palaeozoic  period  ? 

In  the  Triassic  epoch,  the  distribution  of  the  dry  land 
and  of  terrestrial  vertebrate  life  appears  to  have  been, 
generally,  similar  to  that  which  existed  in  the  Mesozoic 
epoch ;  so  that  the  Triassic  continents  and  their  faunae 
seem  to  be  related  to  the  Mesozoic  lands  and  their  faunae, 
just  as  those  of  the  Miocene  epoch  are  related  to  those  of 
the  present  day.  In  fact,  as  I  have  recently  endeavoured 
to  prove  to  the  Society,  there  was  an  Arctogaeal  continent 
and  an  Arctogaeal  province  of  distribution  in  Triassic 
times  as  there  is  now  ;  and  the  Sauropsida  and  Marsu- 
pialia  which  constituted  that  fauna  were,  I  doubt  not, 
the  progenitors  of  the  Sauropsida  and  Marsupialia  of 
the  whole  Mesozoic  epoch. 

Looking  at  the  present  terrestrial  fauna  of  Australia, 
it  appears  to  me  to  be  very  probable  that  it  is  essentially 
a  remnant  of  the  fauna  of  the  Triassic,  or  even  of  an 
earlier,  age ; !  in  which  case  Australia  must  at  that 
time  have  been  in  continuity  with  the  Arctogaeal 
continent. 

But  now  comes  the  further  inquiry,  Where  was  the 

1  Since  this  Address  was  read,  Mr.  Krefft  has  sent  us  news  of  the  discovery 
in  Australia  of  a  freshwater  fish  of  strangely  Palaeozoic  aspect,  and  apparently 
a  Ganoid  intermediate  between  Diptcrus  and  Lepidosircn. 


ix.]  PALAEONTOLOGY  AND  EVOLUTION.  213 

highly  differentiated  Sauropsidan  fauna  of  the  Trias  in 
Palaeozoic  times  ?  The  supposition  that  the  Dinosaurian, 
Crocodilian,  Dicynodontian,  and  Plesiosaurian  types 
were  suddenly  created  at  the  end  of  the  Permian  epoch 
may  be  dismissed,  without  further  consideration,  as  a 
monstrous  and  unwarranted  assumption.  The  supposi- 
tion that  all  these  types  were  rapidly  differentiated  out 
of  Lacertilia,  in  the  time  represented  by  the  passage 
from  the  Palaeozoic  to  the  Mesozoic  formation,  appears 
to  me  to  be  hardly  more  credible,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
indications  of  the  existence  of  Dinosaurian  forms  in  the 
Permian  rocks  which  have  already  been  obtained. 

For  my  part,  I  entertain  no  sort  of  doubt  that  the 
Eeptiles,  Birds,  and  Mammals  of  the  Trias  are  the 
direct  descendants  of  Eeptiles,  Birds,  and  Mammals 
which  existed  in  the  latter  part  of  the  Palaeozoic  epoch, 
but  not  in  any  area  of  the  present  dry  land  which  has 
yet  been  explored  by  the  geologist. 

This  may  seem  a  bold  assumption,  but  it  will  not 
appear  unwarrantable  to  those  who  reflect  upon  the  very 
small  extent  of  the  earth's  surface  which  has  hitherto 
exhibited  the  remains  of  the  great  Mammalian  fauna  of 
the  Eocene  times.  In  this  respect,  the  Permian  land 
Vertebrate  fauna  appears  to  me  to  be  related  to  the 
Triassic  much  as  the  Eocene  is  to  the  Miocene.  Terres- 
trial reptiles  have  been  found  in  Permian  rocks  only  in 
three  localities ;  in  some  spots  of  France,  and  recently 
of  England,  and  over  a  more  extensive  area  in  Germany. 
Who  can  suppose  that  the  few  fossils  yet  found  in  these 
regions  give  any  sufficient  representation  of  the  Permian 
fauna  ? 

It  may  be  said  that  the  Carboniferous  formations 
demonstrate  the  existence  of  a  vast  extent  of  dry 
land  in  the  present  dry-land  area,  and  that  the  sup- 
posed terrestrial  Palaeozoic  Vertebrate  Fauna  ought  to 


214  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [ix. 

have  left  its  remains  in  the  Coal-measures,  especially  as 
there  is  now  reason  to  believe  that  much  of  the  coal  was 
formed  by  the  accumulation  of  spores  and  sporangia  on 
dry  land.  But  if  we  consider  the  matter  more  closely, 
I  think  that  this  apparent  objection  loses  its  force.  It  is 
clear  that,  during  the  Carboniferous  epoch,  the  vast  area 
of  land  which  is  now  covered  by  Coal-measures  must 
have  been  undergoing  a  gradual  depression.  The  dry 
land  thus  depressed  must,  therefore,  have  existed,  as 
such,  before  the  Carboniferous  epoch — in  other  words, 
in  Devonian  times — and  its  terrestrial  population  may 
never  have  been  other  than  such  as  existed  during  the 
Devonian,  or  some  previous  epoch,  although  much  higher 
forms  may  have  been  developed  elsewhere. 

Again,  let  me  say  that  I  am  making  no  gratuitous 
assumption  of  inconceivable  changes.  It  is  clear  that 
the  enormous  area  of  Polynesia  is,  on  the  whole,  an  area 
over  which  depression  has  taken  place  to  an  immense 
extent ;  consequently  a  great  continent,  or  assemblage 
of  subcontinental  masses  of  land,  must  have  existed  at 
some  former  time,  and  that  at  a  recent  period,  geologically 
speaking,  in  the  area  of  the  Pacific.  But  if  that  con- 
tinent had  contained  Mammals,  some  of  them  must  have 
remained  to  tell  the  tale  ;  and  as  it  is  well  known  that 
these  islands  have  no  indigenous  Mammalia,  it  is  safe 
to  assume  that  none  existed.  Thus,  midway  between 
Australia  and  South  America,  each  of  which  possesses  an 
abundant  and  diversified  mammalian  fauna,  a  mass  of 
land,  which  may  have  been  as  large  as  both  put  together, 
must  have  existed  without  a  mammalian  inhabitant. 
Suppose  that  the  shores  of  this  great  land  were  fringed, 
as  those  of  tropical  Australia  are  now,  with  belts  of 
mangroves,  which  would  extend  landwards  on  the  one 
side,  and  be  buried  beneath  littoral  deposits  on  the  other 
side,  as  depression  went  on  ;  and  great  beds  of  mangrove 


is.]  PALEONTOLOGY  AND  EVOLUTION.  215 

lignite  might  accumulate  over  the  sinking  land.  Let 
upheaval  of  the  whole  now  take  place,  in  such  a  manner 
as  to  bring  the  emerging  land  into  continuity  with  the 
South-American  or  Australian  continent,  and,  in  course 
of  time,  it  would  be  peopled  by  an  extension  of  the 
fauna  of  one  of  these  two  regions — just  as  I  imagine 
the  European  Permian  dry  land  to  have  been  peopled. 

I  see  nothing  whatever  against  the  supposition  that 
distributional  provinces  of  terrestrial  life  existed  in  the 
Devonian  epoch,  inasmuch  as  M.  Barrande  has  proved 
that  they  existed  much  earlier.  I  am  aware  of  no  reason 
for  doubting  that,  as  regards  the  grades  of  terrestrial 
life  contained  in  them,  one  of  these  may  have  been 
related  to  another  as  New  Zealand  is  to  Australia,  or  as 
Australia  is  to  India,  at  the  present  day.  Analogy  seems 
to  me  to  be  rather  in  favour  of,  than  against,  the  sup- 
position that  while  only  Ganoid  fishes  inhabited  the  fresh 
waters  of  our  Devonian  land,  Amphibia  and  Reptilia, 
or  even  higher  forms,  may  have  existed,  though  we  have 
not  yet  found  them.  The  earliest  Carboniferous  Amphi- 
bia now  known,  such  as  Anthracosaurus,  are  so  highly 
specialized  that  I  can  by  no  means  conceive  that  they 
have  been  developed  out  of  piscine  forms  in  the  interval 
between  the  Devonian  and  the  Carboniferous-  periods, 
k  considerable  as  that  is.  And  I  take  refuge  in  one  of 
two  alternatives  :  either  they  existed  in  our  own  area 
during  the  Devonian  epoch  and  we  have  simply  not  yet 
found  them  ;  or  they  formed  part  of  the  population  of 
some  other  distributional  province  of  that  day,  and  only 
entered  our  area  by  migration  at  the  end  of  the  Devonian 
epoch.  Whether  Reptilia  and  Mammalia  existed  along 
with  them  is  to  me,  at  present,  a  perfectly  open  question, 
which  is  just  as  likely  to  receive  an  affirmative  as  a 
negative  answer  from  future  inquirers. 

Let  me  now  gather  together  the  threads  of  my  argu- 


216  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [ix. 

mentation  into  the  form  of  a  connected  hypothetical 
view  of  the  manner  in  which  the  distribution  of  living 
and  extinct  animals  has  been  brought  about. 

I  conceive  that  distinct  provinces  of  the  distribution 
of  terrestrial  life  have  existed  since  the  earliest  period  at 
which  that  life  is  recorded,  and  possibly  much  earlier  ; 
and  I  suppose,  with  Mr.  Darwin,  that  the  progress  of 
modification  of  terrestrial  forms  is  more  rapid  in  areas 
of  elevation  than  in  areas  of  depression.  I  take  it  to  be 
certain  that  Labyrinthodont  Amphibia  existed  in  the 
distributional  province  which  included  the  dry  land 
depressed  during  the  Carboniferous  epoch  ;  and  I  con- 
ceive that,  in  some  other  distributional  provinces  of  that 
day,  which  remained  in  the  condition  of  stationary  or  of 
increasing  dry  land,  the  various  types  of  the  terrestrial 
Sauropsida  and  of  the  Mammalia  were  gradually 
developing. 

The  Permian  epoch  marks  the  commencement  of  a 
new  movement  of  upheaval  in  our  area,  which  attained 
its  maximum  in  the  Triassic  epoch,  when  dry  land  existed 
in  North  America,  Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa,  as  it  does 
now.  Into  this  great  new  continental  area  the  Mammals, 
Birds,  and  Eeptiles  developed  during  the  Palaeozoic  epoch 
spread,  and  formed  the  great  Triassic  Arctogaeal  province. 
But,  at  the  end  of  the  Triassic  period,  the  movement  of 
depression  recommenced  in  our  area,  though  it  was 
doubtless  balanced  by  elevation  elsewhere ;  modification 
and  development,  checked  in  the  one  province,  went  on 
in  that  "  elsewhere ; "  and  the  chief  forms  of  Mammals, 
Birds,  and  Eeptiles,  as  we  know  them,  were  evolved  and 
peopled  the  Mesozoic  continent.  I  conceive  Australia  to 
have  become  separated  from  the  continent  as  early  as  the 
end  of  the  Triassic  epoch,  or  not  much  later.  The  Meso- 
zoic continent  must,  I  conceive,  have  lain  to  the  east, 
about  the  shores  of  the  North  Pacific  and  Indian  Oceans ; 


ix.]  PALEONTOLOGY  AND  EVOLUTION.  217 

and  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  it  continued  along  the 
eastern  side  of  the  Pacific  area  to  what  is  now  the  province 
of  Austro-Columbia,  the  characteristic  fauna  of  which  is 
probably  a  remnant  of  the  population  of  the  latter  part 
of  this  period. 

Towards  the  latter  part  of  the  Mesozoic  period  the 
movement  of  upheaval  around  the  shores  of  the  Atlantic 
once  more  recommenced,  and  was  very  probably  accom- 
panied by  a  depression  around  those  of  the  Pacific.  The 
Vertebrate  fauna  elaborated  in  the  Mesozoic  continent 
moved  westward  and  took  possession  of  the  new  lands, 
which  gradually  increased  in  extent  up  to,  and  in  some 
directions  after,  the  Miocene  epoch. 

It  is  in  favour  of  this  hypothesis,  I  think,  that  it  is 
consistent  with  the  persistence  of  a  general  uniformity 
in  the  positions  of  the  great  masses  of  land  and  water. 
From  the  Devonian  period,  or  earlier,  to  the  present  day, 
the  four  great  oceans,  Atlantic,  Pacific,  Arctic,  and  Ant- 
arctic, may  have  occupied  their  present  positions,  and 
only  their  coasts  and  channels  of  communication  have 
undergone  an  incessant  alteration.  And,  finally,  the 
hypothesis  I  have  put  before  you  requires  no  supposition 
that  the  rate  of  change  in  organic  life  has  been  either 
greater  or  less  in  ancient  times  than  it  is  now ;  nor  any 
assumption,  either  physical  or  biological,  which  has  not 
its  justification  in  analogous  phenomena  of  existing 
nature. 

I  have  now  only  to  discharge  the  last  duty  of  my 
office,  which  is  to  thank  you,  not  only  for  the  patient 
attention  with  which  you  have  listened  to  me  so  long  to- 
day, but  also  for  the  uniform  kindness  with  which,  for 
the  past  two  years,  you  have  rendered  my  endeavours 
to  perform  the  important,  and  often  laborious,  functions 
of  your  President  a  pleasure  instead  of  a  burden. 


X. 

ME.   DARWIN'S  CRITICS.1 


THE  gradual  lapse  of  time  lias  now  separated  us  by  more 
than  a  decade  from  the  date  of  the  publication  of  the 
"  Origin  of  Species  " — and  whatever  may  be  thought  or 
said  about  Mr.  Darwin's  doctrines,  or  the  manner  in 
which  he  has  propounded  them,  this  much  is  certain, 
that,  in  a  dozen  years,  the  "  Origin  of  Species "  has 
worked  as  complete  a  revolution  in  biological  science  as 
the  "  Principia  "  did  in  astronomy — and  it  has  done  so, 
because,  in  the  words  of  Helmholtz,  it  contains  "an 
essentially  new  creative  thought."2 

And  as  time  has  slipped  by,  a  happy  change  has  come 
over  Mr.  Darwin's  critics.  The  mixture  of  ignorance 
and  insolence  which,  at  first,  characterized  a  large  pro- 
portion of  the  attacks  with  which  he  was  assailed,  is  no 
longer  the  sad  distinction  of  anti-Darwinian  criticism. 
Instead  of  abusive  nonsense,  which  merely  discredited  its 
writers,  we  read  essays,  which  are,  at  worst,  more  or  less 

1  1.  "Contributions  to  the  Theory  of    Natural  Selection."      By  A.   E. 
Wallace.    1870.— 2.  "  The  Genesis  of  Species."    By  St.  George  Mivart,  F.R.S. 
Second  Edition.  1871. — 3.  "  Darwin's  Descent  of  Man."     Quarterly  Jteview, 
July  1871. 

2  Helmholtz  :  "  Ueber  das  Ziel  und  die  Fortschritte  der  Naturwissenschaft." 
Eroffuungsrede  fur  die  Naturforscherversammlung  zu  Innsbruck.    1869. 


x.]  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS.  219 

intelligent  and  appreciative  ;  while,  sometimes,  like  that 
AY  Inch  appeared  in  the  North  British  Review  for  18  0*7, 
they  have  a  real  and  permanent  value. 

The  several  publications  of  Mr.  Wallace  and  Mr. 
Mivart  contain  discussions  of  some  of  Mr.  Darwin's 
views,  which  are  worthy  of  particular  attention,  not  only 
on  account  of  the  acknowledged  scientific  competence 
of  these  writers,  but  because  they  exhibit  an  attention 
to  those  philosophical  questions  which  underlie  all 
physical  science,  which  is  as  rare  as  it  is  needful. 
And  the  same  may  be  said  of  an  article  in  the  Quarterly 
Review  for  July  1871,  the  comparison  of  which  with 
an  article  in  the  same  Review  for  July  1860,  is  perhaps 
the  best  evidence  which  can  be  brought  forward  of  the 
change  which  has  taken  place  in  public  opinion  on 
"Darwinism." 

The  Quarterly  Reviewer  admits  "  the  certainty  of  the 
action  of  natural  selection "  (p.  49);  and.  further  allows 
that  there  is  an  a  priori  probability  in  favour  of  the 
evolution  of  man  from  some  lower  animal  form,  if  these 
lower  animal  forms  themselves  have  arisen  by  evolution. 

Mr.  Wallace  and  Mr.  Mivart  go  much  further  than 
this.  They  are  as  stout  believers  in  evolution  as  Mr. 
Darwin  himself;  but  Mr.  Wallace  denies  that  man  can 
have  been  evolved  from  a  lower  animal  by  that  process 
of  natural  selection  which  he,  with  Mr.  Darwin,  holds 
to  have  been  sufficient  for  the  evolution  of  all  animals 
below  man  ;  while  Mr.  Mivart,  admitting  that  natural 
selection  has  been  one  of  the  conditions  of  the  evolution 
of  the  animals  below  man,  maintains  that  natural  selec- 
tion must,  even  in  their  case,  have  been  supplemented 
by  "  some  other  cause  " — of  the  nature  of  which,  un- 
fortunately, he  does  not  give  us  any  idea.  Thus  Mr. 
Mivart  is  less  of  a  Darwinian  than  Mr.  Wallace,  for  he 
has  less  faith  in  the  power  of  natural  selection.  But  he 


220  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [s. 

is  more  of  an  evolutionist  than  Mr.  Wallace,  because 
Mr.  Wallace  thinks  it  necessary  to  call  in  an  intelligent 
agent — a  sort  of  supernatural  Sir  John  Sebright — to  pro- 
duce even  the  animal  frame  of  man ;  while  Mr.  Mivart 
requires  no  Divine  assistance  till  he  comes  to  man's  soul. 

Thus  there  is  a  considerable  divergence  between  Mr. 
Wallace  and  Mr.  Mivart.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are 
some  curious  similarities  between  Mr.  Mivart  and  the 
Quarterly  Eeviewer,  and  these  are  sometimes  so  close, 
that,  if  Mr.  Mivart  thought  it  worth  while,  I  think  he 
might  make  out  a  good  case  of  plagiarism  against  the 
He  viewer,  who  studiously  abstains  from  quoting  him. 

Both  the  Eeviewer  and  Mr.  Mivart  reproach  Mr. 
Darwin  with  being,  "  like  so  many  other  physicists," 
entangled  in  a  radically  false  metaphysical  system,  and 
with  setting  at  nought  the  first  principles  of  both 
philosophy  and  religion.  Both  enlarge  upon  the  neces- 
sity of  a  sound  philosophical  basis,  and  both,  I  venture 
to  acid,  make  a  conspicuous  exhibition  of  its  absence. 
The  Quarterly  Eeviewer  believes  that  man  "  differs  more 
from  an  elephant  or  a  gorilla  than  do  these  from 
the  dust  of  the  earth  on  which  they  tread,"  and  Mr. 
Mivart  has  expressed  the  opinion  that  there  is  more  dif- 
ference between  man  and  an  ape  than  there  is  between 
an  ape  and  a  piece  of  granite.1 

And  even  when  Mr.  Mivart  (p.  86)  trips  in  a  matter  of 
anatomy,  and  creates  a  difficulty  for  Mr.  Darwin  out  of 
a  supposed  close  similarity  between  the  eyes  of  fishes 
and  cephalopods,  which  (as  Gegenbaur  and  others  have 
clearly  shown)  does  not  exist,  the  Quarterly  Eeviewer 
adopts  the  argument  without  hesitation  (p.  66). 

There  is  another  important  point,  however,  in  which  it 
is  hard  to  say  whether  Mr.  Mivart  diverges  from  the 
Quarterly  Eeviewer  or  not. 

1  See  the  Tablet  for  March  11, 1871. 


x.]  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS.  221 

The  Beviewer  declares  that  Mr.  Darwin  has,  "  with 
needless  opposition,  set  at  nought  the  first  principles  of 
both  philosophy  and  religion  "  (p.  90). 

It  looks,  at  first,  as  if  this  meant,  that  Mr.  Darwin's 
views  being  false,  the  opposition  to  "  religion "  which 
flows  from  them  must  be  needless.  But  I  suspect  this 
is  not  the  right  view  of  the  meaning  of  the  passage,  as 
Mr.  Mivart,  from  whom  the  Quarterly  Beviewer  plainly 
draws  so  much  inspiration,  tells  us  that  "  the  conse- 
quences which  have  been  drawn  from  evolution,  whether 
exclusively  Darwinian  or  not,  to  the  prejudice  of 
religion,  by  no  means  follow  from  it,  and  are  in  fact 
illegitimate"  (p.  5). 

I  may  assume,  then,  that  the  Quarterly  Beviewer  and 
Mr.  Mivart  admit  that  there  is  no  necessary  opposition 
between  "  evolution,  whether  exclusively  Darwinian  or 
not,"  and  religion.  But  then,  what  do  they  mean  by 
this  last  much-abused  term  ?  On  this  point  the  Quarterly 
Beviewer  is  silent.  Mr.  Mivart,  on  the  contrary,  is 
perfectly  explicit,  and  the  whole  tenor  of  his  remarks 
leaves  no  doubt  that  by  "  religion  "  he  means  theology ; 
and  by  theology,  that  particular  variety  of  the  great 
Proteus,  which  is  expounded  by  the  doctors  of  the 
Boman  Catholic  Church,  and  held  by  the  members  of 
that  religious  community  to  be  the  sole  form  of  absolute 
truth  and  of  saving  faith. 

According  to  Mr.  Mivart,  the  greatest  and  most  ortho- 
dox authorities  upon  matters  of  Catholic  doctrine  agree 
in  distinctly  asserting  "  derivative  creation"  or  evolution  ; 
"and  thus  their  teachings  harmonize  with  all  that  modern 
science  can  possibly  require"  (p.  305). 

I  confess  that  this  bold  assertion  interested  me  more 
than  anything  else  in  Mr.  Mivart's  book.  What  little 
knowledge  I  possessed  of  Catholic  doctrine,  and  of  the 
influence  exerted  by  Catholic  authority  in  former  times, 


222  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x. 

had  not  led  me  to  expect  that  modern  science  was  likely 
to  find  a  warm  welcome  within  the  pale  of  the  greatest 
and  most  consistent  of  theological  organizations. 

And  my  astonishment  reached  its  climax  when  I  found 
Mr.  Mivart  citing  Father  Suarez  as  his  chief  witness  in 
favour  of  the  scientific  freedom  enjoyed  by  Catholics — 
the  popular  repute  of  that  learned  theologian  and  subtle 
casuist  not  being  such  as  to  make  his  works  a  likely  place 
of  refuge  for  liberality  of  thought.  But  in  these  days, 
when  Judas  Iscariot  and  Robespierre,  Henry  VIII.  and 
Catiline,  have  all  been  shown  to  be  men  of  admirable 
virtue,  far  in  advance  of  their  age,  and  consequently  the 
victims  of  vulgar  prejudice,  it  was  obviously  possible 
that  Jesuit  Suarez  might  be  in  like  case.  And,  spurred 
by  Mr.  Mivart's  unhesitating  declaration,  I  hastened  to 
.  acquaint  myself  with  such  of  the  works  of  the  great 
Catholic  divine  as  bore  upon  the  question,  hoping,  not 
merely  to  acquaint  myself  with  the  true  teachings  of  the 
infallible  Church,  and  free  myself  of  an  unjust  prejudice  ; 
but,  haply,  to  enable  myself,  at  a  pinch,  to  put  some 
Protestant  bibliolater  to  shame,  by  the  bright  example  of 
Catholic  freedom  from  the  trammels  of  verbal  inspiration. 

I  regret  to  say  that  my  anticipations  have  been  cruelly 
disappointed.  But  the  extent  to  which  my  hopes  have 
been  crushed  can  only  be  fully  appreciated  by  citing,  in 
the  first  place,  those  passages  of  Mr.  Mivart's  work  by 
which  they  were  excited.  In  his  introductory  chapter  I 
find  the  following  passages  : — 

"The  prevalence  of  this  theory  [of  evolution]  need 
alarm  no  one,  for  it  is,  without  any  doubt,  perfectly  con- 
sistent with  the  strictest  and  most  orthodox  Christian1 
theology"  (p.  5). 

"Mr.  Darwin  and  others  may  perhaps  be  excused  if  they 

1  It  should  be  observed  that  Mr.  Mivart  employs  the  term  "Christian"  as  if 
it  were  the  equivalent  of  "  Catholic." 


x.]  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS.  223 

have  not  devoted  much  time  to  the  study  of  Christian 
philosophy  ;  but  they  have  no  right  to  assume  or  accept 
without  careful  examination,  as  an  unquestioned  fact, 
that  in  that  philosophy  there  is  a  necessary  antagonism 
between  the  two  ideas  '  creation '  and  '  evolution/  as 
applied  to  organic  forms. 

"It  is  notorious  and  patent  to  all  who  choose  to 
seek,  that  many  distinguished  Christian  thinkers  have 
accepted,  and  do  accept,  both  ideas,  i.e.  both  '  creation ' 
and  '  evolution/ 

"  As  much  as  ten  years  ago  an  eminently  Christian 
writer  observed  :  '  The  creationist  theory  does  not 
necessitate  the  perpetual  search  after  manifestations  of 
miraculous  power  and  perpetual  "catastrophes."  Crea- 
tion is  not  a  miraculous  interference  with  the  laws  of 
nature,  but  the  very  institution  of  those  laws.  Law  and 
regularity,  not  arbitrary  intervention,  was  the  patristic 
ideal  of  creation.  With  this  notion  they  admitted, 
without  difficulty,  the  most  surprising  origin  of  living 
creatures,  provided  it  took  place  by  law.  They  held 
that  when  God  said,  "  Let  the  waters  produce,"  "  Let  the 
earth  produce,"  He  conferred  forces  on  the  elements  of 
earth  and  water,  which  enabled  them  naturally  to  pro- 
duce the  various  species  of  organic  beings.  This  power, 
they  thought,  remains  attached  to  the  elements  through- 
out all  time/  The  same  writer  quotes  St.  Augustin  and 
St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  to  the  effect  that,  '  in  the  institution 
of  nature,  we  do  not  look  for  miraclss,  but  for  the  laws 
of  nature/  And,  again,  St.  Basil  speaks  of  the  con- 
tinued operation  of  natural  laws  in  the  production  of  all 


organisms. 


"  So  much  for  the  writers  of  early  and  mediaeval  times. 
As  to  the  present  day,  the  author  can  confidently  affirm 
that  there  are  many  as  well  versed  in  theology  as  Mr. 
Darwin  is  in  his  own  department  of  natural  knowledge, 


224  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x. 

who  would  not  be  disturbed  by  the  thorough  demon- 
stration of  his  theory.  Nay,  they  would  not  even  be 
in  the  least  painfully  affected  at  witnessing  the  genera- 
tion of  animals  of  complex  organization  by  the  skilful 
artificial  arrangement  of  natural  forces,  and  the  pro- 
duction, in  the  future,  of  a  fish  by  means  analogous  to 
those  by  which  we  now  produce  urea. 

"  And  this  because  they  know  that  the  possibility  of 
such  phenomena,  though  by  no  means  actually  foreseen, 
has  yet  been  fully  provided  for  in  the  old  philosophy 
centuries  before  Darwin,  or  even  centuries  before  Bacon, 
and  that  their  place  in  the  system  can  be  at  once  as- 
signed them  without  even  disturbing  its  order  or  marring 
its  harmony. 

"  Moreover,  the  old  tradition  in  this  respect  has  never 
been  abandoned,  however  much  it  may  have  been  ignored 
or  neglected  by  some  modern  writers.  In  proof  of  this,  it 
may  be  observed  that  perhaps  no  post-mediaeval  theologian 
has  a  wider  reception  amongst  Christians  throughout  the 
world  than  Suarez,  who  has  a  separate  section l  in  op- 
position to  those  who  maintain  the  distinct  creation  of 
the  various  kinds — or  substantial  forms — of  organic  life  " 
(pp.  19-21). 

Still  more  distinctly  does  Mr.  Mivart  express  himself, 
in  the  same  sense,  in  his  last  chapter,  entitled  "  Theology 
and  Evolution  "  (pp.  302-5). 

"  It  appears,  then,  that  Christian  thinkers  are  perfectly 
free  to  accept  the  general  evolution  theory.  But  are 
there  any  theological  authorities  to  justify  this  view  of 
the  matter  \ 

"Now,  considering  how  extremely  recent  are  these 

biological  speculations,  it  might  hardly  be  expected   d 

priori  that  writers  of  earlier  ages  should  have  given 

expression  to  doctrines  harmonizing  in  any  degree  with 

1  Suarez,  Metaphysica.  Edition  Yives.  Paris,  1868,  vol.  i.  Disput.  xv.  §  2. 


x.]  MR   DARWIN'S  CRITICS.  225 

such  very  modern  views ;  nevertheless,  this  is  certainly 
the  case,  and  it  would  be  easy  to  give  numerous  examples. 
It  will  be  better,  however,  to  cite  one  or  two  authorities 
of  weight.  Perhaps  no  writer  of  the  earlier  Christian 
ages  could  be  quoted  whose  authority  is  more  generally 
recognized  than  that  of  St.  Augustin.  The  same  may  be 
said  of  the  mediaeval  period  for  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  : 
and  since  the  movement  of  Luther,  Suarez  may  be  taken 
as  an  authority,  widely  venerated,  and  one  whose  ortho- 
doxy has  never  been  questioned. 

"  It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  for  a  considerable 
time  even  after  the  last  of  these  writers  no  one  had 
disputed  the  generally  received  belief  as  to  the  small 
age  of  the  world,  or  at  least  of  the  kinds  of  animals 
and  plants  inhabiting  it.  It  becomes,  therefore,  much 
more  striking  if  views  formed  under  such  a  condition  of 
opinion  are  found  to  harmonize  with  modern  ideas  con- 
cerning '  Creation  '  and  organic  Life. 

"  Now  St.  Augustin  insists  in  a  very  remarkable 
manner  on  the  merely  derivative  sense  in  which  God's 
creation  of  organic  forms  is  to  be  understood ;  that  is, 
that  God  created  them  by  conferring  on  the  material 
world  the  power  to  evolve  them  under  suitable  con- 
ditions." 

Mr.  Mivart  then  cites  certain  passages  from  St.  Au- 
gustin, St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  and  Cornelius  a.  Lapide, 
and  finally  adds  : — 

"  As  to  Suarez,  it  will  be  enough  to  refer  to  Disp.  xv.  sec.  2,  No.  9, 
p.  508,  t.  i.  edition  Vives,  Paris;  also  Nos.  13 — 15.  Many  other 
references  to  the  same  effect  could  easily  be  given,  but  these  may 
suffice. 

"  It  is  then  evident  that  ancient  and  most  venerable  theological 
authorities  distinctly  assert  derivative  creation,  and  thus  their  teach- 
ings harmonize  with  all  that  modern  science  can  possibly  require." 

It  will  be  observed  that  Mr.  Mivart  refers  solely  to 


226  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x. 

Suarez's  fifteenth  Disputation,  though  he  adds,  "  Many 
other  references  to  the  same  effect  could  easily  be  given." 
I  shall  look  anxiously  for  these  references  in  the  third 
edition  of  the  "  Genesis  of  Species."  For  the  present,  all 
I  can  say  is,  that  I  have  sought  in  vain,  either  in  the 
fifteenth  Disputation,  or  elsewhere,  for  any  passage  in 
Suarez's  writings  which,  in  the  slightest  degree,  bears 
out  Mr.  Mivart's  views  as  to  his  opinions.1 

The  title  of  this  fifteenth  Disputation  is  "  De  causa 
formal!  substantial!,"  and  the  second  section  of  that 
Disputation  (to  which  Mr.  Mivart  refers)  is  headed, 
"  Quomodo  possit  forma  substantial  fieri  in  materia  et 
ex  material" 

The  problem  which  Suarez  discusses  in  this  place  may 
be  popularly  stated  thus :  According  to  the  scholastic 
philosophy  every  natural  body  has  two  components — 
the  one  its  "matter"  (materia  prima),  the  other  its 
"  substantial  form "  (forma  substantialis).  Of  these 
the  matter  is  everywhere  the  same,  the  matter  of  one 
body  being  indistinguishable  from  the  matter  of  any 
other  body.  That  which  differentiates  any  one  natural 
body  from  all  others  is  its  substantial  form,  which 
inheres  in  the  matter  of  that  body,  as  the  human  soul 
inheres  in  the  matter  of  the  frame  of  man,  and  is  the 
source  of  all  the  activities  and  other  properties  of  the 
body. 

Thus,  says  Suarez,  if  water  is  heated,  and  the  source 
of  heat  is  then  removed,  it  cools  again.  The  reason 
of  this  is  that  there  is  a  certain  "intimius  principium" 
in  the  water,  which  brings  it  back  to  the  cool  condition 
when  the  external  impediment  to  the  existence  of  that 
condition  is  removed.  This  intimius  principium  is  the 
"substantial  form"  of  the  water.  And  the  substantial 

1  The  edition  of  Suarez's  "  Disputationes  "  from  winch  the  following  citations 
are  given,  is  Birckmann's,  in  two  volumes  folio,  and  is  dated  1630. 


x.]  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS.  227 

form  of  the  water  is  not  only  the  cause  (radix)  of  the 
coolness  of  the  water,  but  also  of  its  moisture,  of  its 
density,  and  of  all  its  other  properties. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  "substantial  forms "  play  nearly 
the  same  part  in  the  scholastic  philosophy  as  "  forces  " 
do  in  modern  science ;  the  general  tendency  of  modern 
thought  being  to  conceive  all  bodies  as  resolvable  into 
material  particles  and  forces,  in  virtue  of  which  last 
these  particles  assume  those  dispositions  and  exercise 
those  powers  which  are  characteristic  of  each  particular 
kind  of  matter. 

But  the  Schoolmen  distinguished  two  kinds  of  sub- 
stantial forms,  the  one  spiritual  and  the  other  material. 
The  former  division  is  represented  by  the  human  soul, 
the  anima  rationalis ;  and  they  affirm  as  a  matter,  not 
merely  of  reason,  but  of  faith,  that  every  human  soul 
is  created  out  of  nothing,  and  by  this  act  of  creation 
is  endowed  with  the  power  of  existing  for  all  eternity, 
apart  from  the  materia  prima  of  which  the  corporeal 
frame  of  man  is  composed.  And  the  anima  rationalis, 
once  united  with  the  materia  prima  of  the  body,  be- 
comes its  substantial  form,  and  is  the  source  of  all  the 
powers  and  faculties  of  man — of  all  the  vital  and  sen- 
sitive phenomena  which  he  exhibits — just  as  the  sub- 
stantial form  of  water  is  the  source  of  all  its  qualities. 

The  "  material  substantial  forms "  are  those  which 
inform  all  other  natural  bodies  except  that  of  man ;  and 
the  object  of  Suarez  in  the  present  Disputation,  is  to 
show  that  the  axiom  " ex  nihilo  nihil  Jit"  though  not 
true  of  the  substantial  form  of  man,  is  true  of  the 
substantial  forms  of  all  other  bodies,  the  endless  muta- 
tions of  which  constitute  the  ordinary  course  of  nature. 
The  origin  of  the  difficulty  which  he  discusses  is  easily 
comprehensible.  Suppose  a  piece  of  bright  iron  to  be 
exposed  to  the  air.  The  existence  of  the  iron  depends 


228  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x. 

on  the  presence  within  it  of  a  substantial  form,  which 
is  the  cause  of  its  properties,  e.g.  brightness,  hardness, 
weight.  Bat,  by  degrees,  the  iron  becomes  converted 
into  a  mass  of  rust,  which  is  dull,  and  soft,  and  light, 
and,  in  all  other  respects,  is  quite  different  from  the  iron. 
As,  in  the  scholastic  view,  this  difference  is  due  to 
the  rust  being  informed  by  a  new  substantial  form, 
the  grave  problem  arises,  how  did  this  new  substan- 
tial form  come  into  being?  Has  it  been  created? 
or  has  it  arisen  by  the  power  of  natural  causation  ? 
If  the  former  hypothesis  is  correct,  then  the  axiom, 
"  ex  nihilo  nihil  jit"  is  false,  even  in  relation  to  the 
ordinary  course  of  nature,  seeing  that  such  mutations 
of  matter  as  imply  the  continual  origin  of  new 
substantial  forms  are  occurring  every  moment.  But 
the  harmonization  of  Aristotle  with  theology  was  as 
dear  to  the  Schoolmen,  as  the  smoothing  down  the  dif- 
ferences between  Moses  and  science  is  to  our  Broad 
Churchmen,  and  they  were  proportionably  unwilling  to 
contradict  one  of  Aristotle's  fundamental  propositions. 
Nor  was  their  objection  to  flying  in  the  face  of  the 
Stagirite  likely  to  be  lessened  by  the  fact  that  such 
flight  landed  them  in  flat  Pantheism. 

So  Father  Suarez  fights  stoutly  for  the  second  hypo- 
thesis; and  I  quote  the  principal  part  of  his  argumen- 
tation as  an  exquisite  specimen  of  that  speech  which  is 
a  "  darkening  of  counsel." 

"  13.  Secundo  de  omnibus  aliis  formis  substantialibus  [sc.  mate- 
rialibus]  dicendum  est  non  fieri  proprie  ex  nihilo,  sed  ex  potentia 
prsejacentis  materise  educi :  ideoque  in  effectione  harum  formarum  nil 
fieri  contra  illud  axioma,  Ex  nihilo  nihil  fit,  si  recte  intelligatur.  Hsec 
assert  io  Bumitur  ex  Aristotele  1.  Physicorum  per  totum  et  libro  7. 
Metaphyss.  et  ex  aliis  authoribus,  quos  statim  referam.  Et  declaratur 
breviter,  nam  fieri  ex  nihilo  duo  dicit,  unum  est  fieri  absolute  et 
simpliciter,  aliud  est  quod  talis  effectio  fit  ex  nihilo.  Primum  propriS 
dicitur  de  re  subsistente,  quia  ejus  est  fieri,  cujus  est  esse :  id  autem 


x.]  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS.  229 

proprie  quod  subsistit  et  habet  esse  :  nam  quod  alter!  adjacet,  potius  est 
quo  aliud  est.  Ex  hac  ergo  parte,  formae  substantiales  materiales  non 
fumt  ex  nihilo,  quia  proprie  non  fiunt.  Atque  hauc  rationem  reddit 
Divus  Thomas  1  parte,  qusestione  45,  articulo  8,  et  quaestione  90, 
articulo  2,  et  ex  dicendis  magis  explicabitur.  Sumendo  ergo  ipsum 
fieri  in  hac  proprietate  et  rigore,  sic  fieri  ex  nihilo  est  fieri  secundum  se 
totum,  id  est  nulla  sui  parte  praesupposita,  ex  quo  fiat.  Et  hac  ratione 
res  naturales  dum  de  novo  fiunt,  non  fiunt  ex  nihilo,  quia  fiunt  ex 
praesupposita  materia,  ex  qua  componuntur,  et  ita  non  fiunt,  secundum 
se  totae,  sed  secundum  aliquid  sui.  Formae  autem  harum  rerum, 
quamvis  revera  totam  suam  entitatem  de  novo  accipiant,  quam  an  tea 
non  habebant,  quia  vero  ipsse  non  fiunt,  ut  dictum  est,  ideo  neque  ex 
nihilo  fiunt.  Attamen,  quia  latiori  modo  sumendo  verbum  illud  fieri 
negari  non  potest :  quin  forma  facta  sit,  eo  modo  quo  nunc  est,  et  antea 
non  erat,  ut  etiam  probat  ratio  dubitandi  posita  in  principio  sectionis, 
ideo  addendum  est,  sumpto  fieri  in  hac  amplitudine,  fieri  ex  nihilo  non 
tamen  negare  habitudinem  materialis  causes  intrinsece  components  id 
quod  fit,  sed  etiam  habitudinem  causce  materialis  per  se  causantis  et 
sustentantis  formam  quae  fit,  seu  confit.  Diximus  enim  in  superioribus 
materiam  et  esse  causam  compositi  et  formae  dependents  ab  ilia :  ut  res 
ergo  dicatur  ex  nihilo  fieri  uterque  modus  causalitatis  negari  debet ;  et 
eodem  sensu  accipiendum  est  illud  axioma,  ut  sit  verum  :  Ex  nihilo 
nihil  fit,  scilicet  virtute  agentis  naturalis  et  finiti  nihil  fieri,  nisi  ex 
praesupposito  subjecto  per  se  concurrente,  et  ad  compositum  et  ad 
formam,  si  utrumque  suo  modo  ab  eodem  agente  fiat.  Ex  his  ergo 
recte  concluditur,  formas  substantiales  materiales  non  fieri  ex  nihilo, 
quia  fiunt  ex  materia,  quae  in  suo  genere  per  se  concurrit,  et  iufluit  ad 
esse,  et  fieri  talium  formarum  ;  quia,  sicut  esse  non  possunt  nisi  affixse 
materise,  a  qua  sustententur  in  esse  :  ita  nee  fieri  possunt,  nisi  earum 
effectio  et  penetratio  in  eadem  materia  sustentetur.  Et  haec  est  propria 
et  per  se  differentia  inter  effectionem  ex  nihilo,  et  ex  aliquo,  propter 
quam,  ut  infra  ostendemus,  prior  modus  efficiendi  superat  vim  finitam 
naturaliam  agentium,  non  vero  posterior. 

"  14.  Ex  his  etiam  constat,  proprie  de  his  formis  dici  non  creari,  sed 
educi  de  potentia  materiae."1 

If  I  may  venture  to  interpret  these  hard  sayings, 
Suarez  conceives  that  the  evolution  of  substantial  forms 
in  the  ordinary  course  of  'nature,  is  conditioned  not  only 
by  the  existence  of  the  materia  prima,  but  also  by  a 
certain  "  concurrence  and  influence  "  which  that  materia 

1  Suarez,  loc.  cit.  Dispuf.  xv.  §  ii. 


230  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x. 

exerts ;  and  every  new  substantial  form  being  thus 
conditioned,  and  in  part,  at  any  rate,  caused,  by  a 
pre-existing  something,  cannot  be  said  to  be  created 
out  of  nothing. 

But  as  the  whole  tenor  of  the  context  shows,  Suarez 
applies  this  argumentation  merely  to  the  evolution  of 
material  substantial  forms  in  the  ordinary  course  of 
nature.  How  the  substantial  forms  of  animals  and 
plants  primarily  originated,  is  a  question  to  which,  so  far 
as  I  am  able  to  discover,  he  does  not  so  much  as  allude 
in  his  "  Metaphysical  Disputations."  Nor  was  there  any 
necessity  that  he  should  do  so,  inasmuch  as  he  has 
devoted  a  separate  treatise  of  considerable  bulk  to  the 
discussion  of  all  the  problems  which  arise  out  of  the 
account  of  the  Creation  which  is  given  in  the  Book  of 
Genesis.  And  it  is  a  matter  of  wonderment  to  me  that 
Mr.  Mivart,  who  somewhat  sharply  reproves  "Mr. 
Darwin  and  others  "  for  not  acquainting  themselves  with 
the  true  teachings  of  his  Church,  should  allow  himself  to 
be  indebted  to  a  heretic  like  myself  for  a  knowledge  of 
the  existence  of  that  "  Tractatus  de  opere  sex  Dierum,"1 
in  which  the  learned  Father,  of  whom  he  justly  speaks, 
as  "  an  authority  widely  venerated,  and  whose  orthodoxy 
has  never  been  questioned,"  directly  opposes  all  those 
opinions,  for  which  Mr.  Mivart  claims  the  shelter  of  his 
authority. 

In  the  tenth  and  eleventh  chapters  of  the  first  book 
of  this  treatise,  Suarez  inquires  in  what  sense  the  word 
"  day,"  as  employed  in  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis,  is 
to  be  taken.  He  discusses  the  views  of  Philo  and  of 
Augustin  on  this  question,  and  rejects  them.  He 
suggests  that  the  approval  of  their  allegorizing  inter- 

1  "  Tractatus  de  opere  sex  Dierum,  seu  de  Universi  Creatione,  quatenus  sex 
diebus  uerfecta  esse,  in  libro  Genesis  cap.  i.  refertur,  et  prsesertim  de  produc- 
tione  liominis  in  statu  innocentise."  Ed.  Birckmann,  1622. 


x.]  ME.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS.  231 

pretations  by  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  merely  arose  out  of 
St.  Thomas's  modesty,  and  his  desire  not  to  seem  openly 
to  controvert  St.  Augustin — "  voluisse  Divus  Thomas  pro 
sua  modestia  subterfugere  vim  argument!  potius  quam 
apcrte  Augustinum  inconstantiao  arguere." 

Finally,  Suarez  decides  that  the  writer  of  Genesis 
meant  that  the  term  "day"  should  be  taken  in  its 
natural  sense  ;  and  he  winds  up  the  discussion  with  the 
very  just  and  natural  remark  that  "  it  is  not  probable 
that  God,  in  inspiring  Moses  to  write  a  history  of  the 
Creation  which  was  to  be  believed  by  ordinary  people, 
would  have  made  him  use  language,  the  true  meaning 
of  which  it  is  hard  to  discover,  and  still  harder  to 
believe." ' 

And  in  chapter  xii.  3,  Suarez  further  observes  :— 

"  Ratio  enim  retinendi  veram  significationem  diei  naturalis  est  ilia 
communis,  quod  verba  Scripturse  non  sunt  ad  metaphoras  transferenda, 
nisi  vel  necessitas  cogit,  vel  ex  ipsa  scriptura  constet,  et  maxime  in 
historica  narratione  et  ad  instructionem  fidei  pertinente  :  sed  hoec  ratio 
non  minus  cogit  ad  intelligendum  propri&  dierum  numerum,  quam  diei 
qualitatem,  QUIA  NON  MINUS  UNO  MODO  QUAM  ALIO  DESTRUITUR  SINCE- 
RITAS,  IMO  ET  VERiTAS  HISTORIC.  Secundo  hoc  valde  confirmant  alia 
Scriptures  loca,  in  quibus  hi  sex  dies  tanquam  veri,  et  inter  se  distincti 
commemorantur,  ut  Exod.  20  dicitur,  Sex  diebus  operabis  et  fades 
omnia  opera  tua,  septimo  autem  die  Sabbatum  Domini  Dei  tui  est.  Et 
infra  :  Sex  enim  diebus  fecit  Dominus  ccdum  et  terram  et  mare  et  omnia 
quae  in  eis  sunt,  et  idem  repetitur  in  cap.  31.  In  quibus  locis  sermonis 
proprietas  colligi  potest  turn  ex  sequiparatione,  nam  cum  dicitur :  sex 
diebus  operabis,  propriissime  intelligitur  :  turn  quia  non  est  Yerisimile, 
potuisse  populum  intelligere  verba  ilia  in  alio  sensu,  et  e  contrario 
incredibile  est,  Deum  in  suis  praeceptis  tradendis  illis  verbis  ad 
populum  fuisse  loquutum,  quibus  deciperetur,  falsum  sensum  conci- 
piendo,  si  Deus  non  per  sex  veros  dies  opera  sua  fecisset." 

1  "Propter  hffic  er^o  sententia  ilia  Augustini  et  prppter  nimiam  obscuritatem 
ct  subtilitatera  ejus  difficilis  creditu  est :  quia  yerisimile  non  est  Deum  inspi- 
rasse  Moysi,  ut  histpriam  de  creatipne  mundi  ad  fidem  totius  pppuli  aded 
ueccssariam  per  nomina  diernm  explicaret,  quorum  significatio  vk  iuveniri  et 
difficillime  ab  aliquo  credi  posset."  (Loc.  cit.  Lib.  I.  cap.  xi.  42.) 


232  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [r. 

These  passages  leave  no  doubt  that  this  great  doctor 
of  the  Catholic  Church,  of  unchallenged  authority  and 
unspotted  orthodoxy,  not  only  declares  it  to  be  Catholic 
doctrine  that  the  work  of  creation  took  place  in  the 
space  of  six  natural  days ;  but  that  he  warmly  repu- 
diates, as  inconsistent  with  our  knowledge  of  the  Divine 
attributes,  the  supposition  that  the  language  which 
Catholic  faith  requires  the  believer,  to  hold  that  God 
inspired,  was  used  in  any  other  sense  than  that  which 
He  knew  it  would  convey  to  the  minds  of  those  to  whom 
it  was  addressed. 

And  I  think  that  in  this  repudiation  Father  Suarez 
will  have  the  sympathy  of  every  man  of  common 
uprightness,  to  whom  it  is  certainly  "incredible  "  that 
the  Almighty  should  have  acted  in  a  manner  which  He 
would  esteem  dishonest  and  base  in  a  man. 

But  the  belief  that  the  universe  was  created  in  six 
natural  days  is  hopelessly  inconsistent  with  the  doctrine 
of  evolution,  in  so  far  as  it  applies  to  the  stars  and 
planetary  bodies ;  and  it  can  be  made  to  agree  with  a 
belief  in  the  evolution  of  living  beings  only  by  the 
supposition  that  the  plants  and  animals,  which  are  said 
to  have  been  created  on  the  third,  fifth,  and  six  days, 
were  merely  the  primordial  forms,  or  rudiments,  out  of 
which  existing  plants  and  animals  have  been  evolved ;  so 
that,  on  these  days,  plants  and  animals  were  not  created 
actually,  but  only  potentially. 

The  latter  view  is  that  held  by  Mr.  Mivart,  who  follows 
St.  Augustin,  and  implies  that  he  has  the  sanction  of 
Suarez.  But,  in  point  of  fact,  the  latter  great  light  of 
orthodoxy  takes  no  small  pains  to  give  the  most  explicit 
and  direct  contradiction  to  all  such  imaginations,  as  the 
following  passages  prove.  In  the  first  place,  as  regards 
plants,  Suarez  discusses  the  problem  : — 


x.]  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS.  233 

"  Quomodo  hcrba  virens  et  ccetera  vegetabilia  hoc  \tertio~]  die  fuerint 
producta.1 

"Praecipua  euim  difficultas  htc  est,  quam  attingit  Div.  Thomas  1, 
par.  qu.  69,  art.  2,  an  haec  productio  plantarum  hoc  die  facta  intelli- 
genda  sit  de  productione  ipsarum  in  proprio  esse  actuali  et  formal!  (ut 
sic  rem  explicerem)  vel  de  productiono  tantum  in  semine  et  in 
potentia.  Nam  Divus  Augustinus  libro  quinto  Genes,  ad  liter,  cap. 
4  et  5  et  libro  8,  cap.  3,  posteriorem  partem  tradit,  dicens,  terram  in 
hoc  die  accepisse  virtutem  germinandi  omnia  vegetabilia  quasi  con- 
cepto  omnium  illorum  semine,  non  tamen  statim  vegetabilia  omnia 
produxisse.  Quod  prirno  suadet  verbis  illis  capitis  secu-ndi.  In  die 
quo  fecit  Deus  ccelum  et  terrain  et  omne  virgultum  agri  priusquam  germi- 
naret.  Quomodo  enim  potuerunt  virgulta  fieri  antequam  terra  germi- 
naret  nisi  quia  causaliter  prius  et  quasi  in  radice,  seu  in  semine  facta 
sunt,  et  postea  in  actu  producta  ?  Secundo  confirmari  potest,  quia 
verbum  illud  germinet  terra  optime  exponitur  potestative  ut  sic 
dicam,  id  est,  accipiat  terra  vim  germinandi.  Sicut  in  eodem  capite 
dicitur  crescite  et  multiplicamini.  Tertio  potest  confirmari,  quia 
actualis  productio  vegetabilium  non  tarn  ad  opus  creationis,  quam  ad 
opus  propagationis  pertinet,  quod  postea  factum  est.  Et  hauc  senten- 
tiam  sequitur  Eucherius  lib.  1,  in  Gen.  cap.  11,  et  illi  faveat  Glossa, 
interli.  Hugo,  et  Lyran.  dum  verbum  germinet  dicto  modo  exponunt. 

NlHILOMINUS  CONTRARIA  SENTENTIA  TENENDA  EST  :  SCILICET,  PRODUXISSE 
DEUM  HOC  DIE  HERBAM,  ARBORES,  ET  ALIA  VEGETABILIA  ACTU  IN  PROPRIA 

SPECIE  ET  NATURA.  Hsec  est  communis  sententia  Patrum. — Basil, 
homil.  5;  Exaemer.  Ambros.  lib.  3;  Exaemer.  cap.  8,11,  ct  16;  Chrysost, 
homil.  5  in  Gen.  Damascene,  lib.  2  de  Fid.  cap.  10 ;  Theodor.  Cyrilli. 
Bedae,  Glossse  ordinariae  et  aliorum  in  Gen.  Et  idem  sentit  Divus 
Thomas,  supra,  solvens  argumenta  Augustini,  quam  vis  propter  reve- 
rentiam  ejus  quasi  problematice  semper  procedat.  Denique  idem 
sentiunt  omnes  qui  in  his  operibus  veram  successionem  et  temporalem 
distinctionem  agnoscant.1' 

Secondly,  with  respect  to  animals,  Suarez  is  no  less 
decided : — 

11  De  animalium  ratione  carentium  productione  quinto  et  sexto  die 

facta.1 

il  32.  Primo  ergo  nobis  certum  sit  hsec  animantia  non  in  virtute 
tantum  aut  in  semine,  sed  actu,  et  in  seipsis,  facta  fuisse  his  diebus  in 
quibus  facta  narrantur.  Quanquam  Augustinus  lib.  3,  Gen.  ad  liter, 
cap.  5  in  sua  persistens  sententia  contrarium  sentire  videatur." 

1  Loc.  cit.  Lib.  II.  cap.  vii.  et  viii.  1,  32,  35. 


234  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x. 

But  Suarez  proceeds  to  refute  Augustin's  opinions  at 
great  length,  and  his  final  judgment  may  be  gathered 
from  the  following  passage  : — 

"  35.  Tertio  dicendum  est,  haec  animalia  omnia  his  diebus  producta 

CSSe,  IN  PERFECTO  STATU,  IN  SINGULIS  INDIVIDUIS,  SEU  SPECIEBUS  SUIS, 
JUXTA  UNIUSCUJUSQUE i  NATURAM  ....  IlAQUE  FUERUNT  OMNIA  CREATA 
INTEGRA  ET  OMNIBUS  SUIS  MEMBRIS  PERFECTA." 

As  regards  the  creation  of  animals  and  plants,  there- 
fore, it  is  clear  that  Suarez,  so  far  from  "  distinctly 
asserting  derivative  creation,"  denies  it  as  distinctly 
and  positively  as  he  can ;  that  he  is  at  much  pains 
to  refute  St.  Augustin's  opinions ;  that  he  does  not 
hesitate  to  regard  the  faint  acquiescence  of  St.  Thomas 
Aquinas  in  the  views  of  his  brother  saint  as  a  kindly 
subterfuge  on  the  part  of  Divus  Thomas  ;  and  that  he 
affirms  his  own  view  to  be  that  which  is  supported  by 
the  authority  of  the  Fathers  of  the  Church.  So  that, 
when  Mr.  Mivart  tells  us  that  Catholic  theology  is  in 
harmony  with  all  that  modern  science  can  possibly 
require ;  that  "  to  the  general  theory  of  evolution, 
and  to  the  special  Darwinian  form  of  it,  no  exception 
.  .  .  need  be  taken  on  the  ground  of  orthodoxy ; "  and 
that  "  law  and  regularity,  not  arbitrary  intervention, 
was  the  Patristic  ideal  of  creation,"  we  have  to  choose 
between  his  dictum,  as  a  theologian,  and  that  of  a  great 
light  of  his  Church,  whom  he  himself  declares  to  be 
"  widely  venerated  as  an  authority,  and  whose  orthodoxy 
has  never  been  questioned." 

But  Mr.  Mivart  does  not  hesitate  to  push  his  attempt 
to  harmonize  science  with  Catholic  orthodoxy  to  its 
utmost  limit;  and,  while  assuming  that  the  soul  of 
man  "  arises  from  immediate  and  direct  creation,"  he 
supposes  that  his  body  was  "formed  at  first  (as  now 
in  each  separate  individual)  by  derivative,  or  secondary 
creation,  through  natural  laws  "  (p.  331). 


x.]  MR.  DARWIWS  CRITICS.  235 

This  means,  I  presume,  that  an  animal,  having  the 
corporeal  form  and  bodily  powers  of  man,  may  have 
been  developed  out  of  some  lower  form  of  life  by  a 
process  of  evolution;  and  that,  after  this  anthropoid 
animal  had  existed  for  a  longer  or  shorter  time,  God 
made  a  soul  by  direct  creation,  and  put  it  into  the 
manlike  body,  which,  heretofore,  had  been  devoid  of 
that  anima  rationalis,  which  is  supposed  to  be  man's 
distinctive  character. 

This  hypothesis  is  incapable  of  either  proof  or  disproof, 
and  therefore  may  be  true;  but  if  Suarez  is  any  authority, 
it  is  not  Catholic  doctrine.  "  Nulla  est  in  homine  forma 
educta  de  potentia  materiae,"1  is  a  dictum  which  is 
absolutely  inconsistent  with  the  doctrine  of  the  natural 
evolution  of  any  vital  manifestation  of  the  human  body. 

Moreover,  if  man  existed  as  an  animal  before  he  was 
provided  with  a  rational  soul,  he  must,  in  accordance 
with  the  elementary  requirements  of  the  philosophy 
in  which  Mr.  Mivart  delights,  have  possessed  a  distinct 
sensitive  and  vegetative  soul,  or  souls.  Hence,  when  the 
"  breath  of  life  "  was  breathed  into  the  manlike  animal's 
nostrils,  he  must  have  already  been  a  living  and  feeling 
creature.  But  Suarez  particularly  discusses  this  point, 
and  not  only  rejects  Mr.  Mivart's  view,  but  adopts 
language  of  very  theological  strength  regarding  it. 

"Possent  prseterea  his  adjungi.  argumenta  theologica,  ut  est  illud 
quod  sumitur  ex  illis  verbis  Genes.  2.  Formavit  Deus  hominem  ex  limo 
terrce  et  inspiravit  in  faciem  eju-s  spiraculum  vitce  et  factus  est  homo  in 
animam  viventem :  ille  enim  spiritus,  quam  Deus  spiravit,  anima 
rationalis  fait,  et  PER  EADEM  FACTUS  EST  HOMO  VIVENS,  ET  CONSE- 

QUEXTER,  ETIAM  SENTIEXS. 

"  Aliud  est  ex  VIII.  Synodo  General!  quae  est  Constantinopolitana 
IV.  can.  11,  qui  sic  habet.  Apparet  quosdam  in  tantum  impietatis 
venisse  ut  homines  duas  animas  habere  dogmatizent :  tails  igitur  impie- 
tatis inventores  et  similes  sapientes,  cum  Vetus  et  Novum  Testamentum 

1  Disput.  xv.  §  x.  No.  27. 


236  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x. 

omnesque  Ecclesice  patres  unarn  animam  rationalem  hominem   habere 
asseverent,  Sancta  etuniversalis  Synodus  anathematizat."1 

Moreover,  if  the  animal  nature  of  man  was  the  result 
of  evolution,  so  must  that  of  woman  have  been.  But 
the  Catholic  doctrine,  according  to  Suarez,  is  that 
woman  was,  in  the  strictest  and  most  literal  sense  of 
the  words,  made  out  of  the  rib  of  man. 

"  Nihilominus  sententia  Catholica  est,  verba  ilia  Scriptureo  esse  ad 
literam  intelligenda.  Ac  PROINDE  VERB,  AC  REALITER,  TULISSE  DEUM 

COSTAM  AD^E    ET    EX  ILLA    CORPUS  Ev^E  FORMASSE."  2 


Nor  is  there  any  escape  in  the  supposition  that 
some  woman  existed  before  Eve,  after  the  fashion  of  the 
Lilith  of  the  rabbis  ;  since  Suarez  qualifies  that  notion, 
along  with  some  other  Judaic  imaginations,  as  simply 
"  damnabilis."  3 

After  the  perusal  of  the  "  Tractatus  de  Opere  "  it  is, 
in  fact,  impossible  to  admit  that  Suarez  held  any  opinion 
respecting  the  origin  of  species,  except  such  as  is  con- 
sistent with  the  strictest  and  most  literal  interpretation 
of  the  words  of  Genesis.  For  Suarez,  it  is  Catholic  doc- 
trine, that  the  world  was  made  in  six  natural  days.  On 
the  first  of  these  days  the  mater  ia  prima  was  made  out 
of  nothing,  to  receive  afterwards  those  "substantial 
forms  "  which  moulded  it  into  the  universe  of  things  ;  on 
the  third  day,  the  ancestors  of  all  living  plants  suddenly 
came  into  being,  full-grown,  perfect,  and  possessed  of  all 
the  properties  which  now  distinguish  them  ;  while,  on 
the  fifth  and  sixth  days,  the  ancestors  of  all  existing 
animals  were  similarly  caused  to  exist  in  their  complete 
and  perfect  state,  by  the  infusion  of  their  appropriate 
material  substantial  forms  into  the  matter  which  had 
already  been  created.  Finally  on  the  sixth  day,  the 

1  Disput.  xv.  "  De  causa  formal!  substantial]',"  §  x.  No.  24. 

2  "  Tractatus  de  Opere/'  Lib.  III.  "  De  he-minis  creatione,"  cap.  ii.  No.  3. 

3  Ibid.  Lib.  III.  cap.  iv.  Nos.  8  and  9. 


t.i  MR.  DARWIN'S 

anima  rationalis — that  rational  and  immortal  substan- 
tial  form  which  is  peculiar  to  man — was  created  out 
of  nothing,  and  "breathed  into"  a  mass  of  matter 
which,  till  then,  was  mere  dust  of  the  earth,  and  so 
man  arose.  But  the  species  man  was  represented  by  a 
solitary  male  individual,  until  the  Creator  took  out  one 
of  his  ribs  and  fashioned  it  into  a  female. 

This  is  the  view  of  the  "  Genesis  of  Species,"  held 
by  Suarez  to  be  the  only  one  consistent  with  Catholic 
faith  :  it  is  because  he  holds  this  view  to  be  Catholic 
that  he  does  not  hesitate  to  declare  St.  Augustin  unsound, 
and  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  guilty  of  weakness,  when  the 
one  swerved  from  this  view  and  the  other  tolerated  the 
deviation.  And,  until  responsible  Catholic  authority — 
say,  -for  example,  the  Archbishop  of  Westminster — - 
formally  declares  that  Suarez  was  wrong,  and  that 
Catholic  priests  are  free  to  teach  their  flocks  that  the 
world  was  not  made  in  six  natural  days,  and  that  plants 
and  animals  were  not  created  in  their  perfect  and  com- 
plete state,  but  have  been  evolved  by  natural  processes 
through  long  ages  from  certain  germs  in  which  they  were 
potentially  contained,  I,  for  one,  shall  feel  bound  to 
believe  that  the  doctrines  of  Suarez  are  the  only  ones 
which  are  sanctioned  by  Infallible  Authority,  as  repre- 
sented by  the  Holy  Father  and  the  Catholic  Church. 

I  need  hardly  add  that  they  are  as  absolutely  denied 
and  repudiated  by  Scientific  Authority,  as  represented  by 
Eeason  and  Fact.  The  question  whether  the  earth  and 
the  immediate  progenitors  of  its  present  living  popula- 
tion were  made  in  six  natural  days  or  not,  is  no  longer 
one  upon  which  two  opinions  can  be  held. 

The  fact  that  it  did  not  so  come  into  being  stands 
upon  as  sound  a  basis  as  any  fact  of  history  whatever. 
It  is  not  true  that  existing  plants  and  animals  came  into 
being  within  three  days  of  the  creation  of  the  earth  out 


238  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x. 

of  nothing,  for  it  is  certain  that  innumerable  generations 
of  other  plants  and  animals  lived  upon  the  earth  before 
its  present  population.  And  when,  Sunday  after  Sunday, 
men  who  profess  to  be  our  instructors  in  righteousness 
read  out  the  statement,  "  In  six  days  the  Lord  made 
heaven  and  earth,  the  sea,  and  all  that  in  them  is,"  in 
innumerable  churches,  they  are  either  propagating  what 
they  may  easily  know,  and,  therefore,  are  bound  to  know, 
to  be  falsities  ;  or,  if  they  use  the  words  in  some  non- 
natural  sense,  they  fall  below  the  moral  standard  of  the 
much- abused  Jesuit. 

Thus  far  the  contradiction  between  Catholic  verity 
and  Scientific  verity  is  complete  and  absolute,  quite 
independently  of  the  truth  or  falsehood  of  the  doctrine 
of  evolution.  But,  for  those  who  hold  the  doctrine  of 
evolution,  all  the  Catholic  verities  about  the  creation 
of  living  beings  must  be  no  less  false.  For  them,  the 
assertion  that  the  progenitors  of  all  existing  plants 
were  made  on  the  third  day,  of  animals  on  the  fifth  and 
sixth  days,  in  the  forms  they  now  present,  is  simply 
false.  Nor  can  they  admit  that  man  was  made  sud- 
denly out  of  the  dust  of  the  earth ;  while  it  would  be 
an  insult  to  ask  an  evolutionist  whether  he  credits  the 
preposterous  fable  respecting  the  fabrication  of  woman 
to  which  Suarez  pins  his  faith.  If  Suarez  has  rightly 
stated  Catholic  doctrine,  then  is  evolution  utter  heresy. 
And  such  I  believe  it  to  be.  In  addition  to  the  truth 
of  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  indeed,  one  of  its  greatest 
merits  in  my  eyes,  is  the  fact  that  it  occupies  a  position 
of  complete  and  irreconcilable  antagonism  to  that 
vigorous  and  consistent  enemy  of  the  highest  intellec- 
tual, moral,  and  social  life  of  mankind — the  Catholic 
Church.  No  doubt,  Mr.  Mivart,  like  other  putters  of 
new  wine  into  old  bottles,  is  actuated  by  motives  which 
are  worthy  of  respect,  and  even  of  sympathy ;  but  his 


x.J  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS.  239 

attempt  has  met  with  the  fate  which  the  Scripture 
prophesies  for  all  such. 

Catholic  theology,  like  all  theologies  which  are  based 
upon  the  assumption  of  the  truth  of  the  account  of  the 
origin  of  things  given  in  the  Book  of  Genesis,  being 
utterly  irreconcilable  with  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  the 
student  of  science,  who  is  satisfied  that  the  evidence 
upon  which  the  doctrine  of  evolution  rests,  is  incom- 
parably stronger  and  better  than  that  upon  which  the 
supposed  authority  of  the  Book  of  Genesis  rests,  will  not 
trouble  himself  further  with  these  theologies,  but  will 
confine  his  attention  to  such  arguments  against  the  view 
he  holds  as  are  based  upon  purely  scientific  data — and 
by  scientific  data  I  do  not  merely  mean  the  truths  of 
physical,  mathematical,  or  logical  science,  but  those  of 
moral  and  metaphysical  science.  For,  by  science,  I 
understand  all  knowledge  which  rests  upon  evidence  and 
reasoning  of  a  like  character  to  that  which  claims  our 
assent  to  ordinary  scientific  propositions.  And  if  any 
one  is  able  to  make  good  the  assertion  that  his  theology 
rests  upon  valid  evidence  and  sound  reasoning,  then  it 
appears  to  me  that  such  theology  will  take  its  place  as 
a  part  of  science. 

The  present  antagonism  between  theology  and  science 
does  not  arise  from  any  assumption  by  the  men  of 
science  that  all  theology  must  necessarily  be  excluded 
from  science  ;  but  simply  because  they  are  unable  to 
allow  that  reason  and  morality  have  two  weights  and 
two  measures ;  and  that  the  belief  in  a  proposition, 
because  authority  tells  you  it  is  true,  or  because  you 
wish  to  believe  it,  which  is  a  high  crime  and  misde- 
meanour when  the  subject  matter  of  reasoning  is  of  one 
kind,  becomes  under  the  alias  of  "  faith  "  the  greatest 
of  all  virtues,  when  the  subject  matter  of  reasoning  is  of 
another  kind. 


240  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x. 

The  Bishop  of  Brechin  said  well  the  other  day: — 
"Liberality  in  religion — I  do  not  mean  tender  and 
generous  allowances  for  the  mistakes  of  others — is  only 
unfaithfulness  to  truth/'1  And,  with  the  same  qualifi- 
cation, I  venture  to  paraphrase  the  Bishop's  dictum : 
"  Ecclesiasticism  in  science  is  only  unfaithfulness  to 
truth." 

Elijah's  great  question,  "  Will  you  serve  God  or  Baal  ? 
Choose  ye,"  is  uttered  audibly  enough  in  the  ears  of 
every  one  of  us  as  we  come  to  manhood.  Let  every  man 
who  tries  to  answer  it  seriously,  ask  himself  whether  he 
can  be  satisfied  with  the  Baal  of  authority,  and  with  all 
the  good  things  his  worshippers  are  promised  in  this 
world  and  the  next.  If  he  can,  let  him,  if  he  be  so 
inclined,  amuse  himself  with  such  scientific  implements 
as  authority  tells  him  are  safe  and  will  not  cut  his 
fingers ;  but  let  him  not  imagine  he  is,  or  can  be,  both 
a  true  son  of  the  Church  and  a  loyal  soldier  of  science. 

And,  on  the  other  hand,  if  the  blind  acceptance  of 
authority  appears  to  him  in  its  true  colours,  as  mere, 
private  judgment  in  excelsis,  and  if  he  have  the  cou- 
rage to  stand  alone,  face  to  face  with  the  abyss  of  the 
Eternal  and  Unknowable,  let  him  be  content,  once  for 
all,  not  only  to  renounce  the  good  things  promised  by 
"  Infallibility,"  but  even  to  bear  the  bad  things  which 
it  prophesies;  content  to  follow  reason  and  fact  in 
singleness  and  honesty  of  purpose,  wherever  they  may 
lead,  in  the  sure  faith  that  a  hell  of  honest  men  will, 
to  him,  be  more  endurable  than  a  paradise  full  of 
angelic  shams. 

Mr.  Mivart  asserts  that  "  without  a  belief  in  a  personal 
God,  there  is  no  religion  worthy  of  the  name/'  This  is 
a  matter  of  opinion.  But  it  may  be  asserted,  with  less 
reason  to  fear  contradiction,  that  the  worship  of  a 

1  Charge  at  the  Diocesan  Synod  of  Brechin.    Scotsman,  Sept.  14, 1871. 


x.]  Mil.  DARWIN'S  CJKITICS.  241 

personal  God,  who,  on  Mr.  Mivart's  hypothesis,  must 
have  used  language  studiously  calculated  to  deceive 
His  creatures  and  worshippers,  is  "no  religion  worthy 
of  the  name."  "  Incredibile  est,  Deum  illis  verbis  ad 
populum  fuisse  locutum  quibus  deciperetur,"  is  a  verdict 
in  which,  for  once,  Jesuit  casuistry  concurs  with  the 
healthy  moral  sense  of  all  mankind. 

Having  happily  got  quit  of  the  theological  aspect  of 
evolution,  the  supporter  of  that  great  truth  who  turns  to 
the  scientific  objections  which  are  brought  against  it  by 
recent  criticism,  finds,  to  his  relief,  that  the  work  before 
him  is  greatly  lightened  by  the  spontaneous  retreat  of 
the  enemy  from  nine-tenths  of  the  territory  which  he 
occupied  ten  years  ago.  Even  the  Quarterly  Keviewer 
not  only  abstains  from  venturing  to  deny  that  evolution 
has  taken  place,  but  he  openly  admits  that  Mr.  Darwin 
has  forced  on  men's  minds  "  a  recognition  of  the  proba- 
bility, if  not  more,  of  evolution,  and  of  the  certainty  of 
the  action  of  natural  selection"  (p.  49). 

I  do  not  quite  see,  myself,  how,  if  the  action  of  natural 
selection  is  certain,  the  occurrence  of  evolution  is  only 
probable ;  inasmuch  as  the  development  of  a  new  species 
by  natural  selection  is,  so  far  as  it  goes,  evolution.  How- 
ever, it  is  not  worth  while  to  quarrel  with  the  precise 
terms  of  a  sentence  which  shows  that  the  high  watermark 
of  intelligence  among  those  most  respectable  of  Britons, 
the  readers  of  the  Quarterly  Review,  has  now  reached 
such  a  level  that  the  next  tide  may  lift  them  easily  and 
pleasantly  on  the  once-dreaded  shore  of  evolution.  Nor, 
having  got  there,  do  they  seem  likely  to  stop,  until  they 
have  reached  the  inmost  heart  of  that  great  region,  and 
accepted  the  ape  ancestry  of,  at  any  rate,  the  body  of 
man.  For  the  Reviewer  admits  that  Mr.  Darwin  can 
be  said  to  have  established : 


242  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x. 

"  That  if  the  various  kinds  of  lower  animals  have  been  evolved  one 
from  the  other  by  a  process  of  natural  generation  or  evolution,  then 
it  becomes  highly  probable,  d  priori,  that  man's  body  has  been 
similarly  evolved ;  but  this,  in  such  a  case,  becomes  equally  probable 
from  the  admitted  fact  that  he  is  an  animal  at  all  "  (p.  65). 

From  the  principles  laid  down  in  the  last  sentence,  it 
would  follow  that  if  man  were  constructed  upon  a  plan 
as  different  from  that  of  any  other  animal  as  that  of  a 
sea-urchin  is  from  that  of  a  whale,  it  would  be  "  equally 
probable  "  that  he  had  been  developed  from  some  other 
animal  as  it  is  now,  when  we  know  that  for  every  bone, 
muscle,  tooth,  and  even  pattern  of  tooth,  in  man,  there 
is  a  corresponding  bone,  muscle,  tooth,  and  pattern  of 
tooth,  in  an  ape.  And  this  shows  one  of  two  things— 
either  that  the  Quarterly  Beviewer's  notions  of  probability 
are  peculiar  to  himself;  or,  that  he  has  such  an  over- 
powering faith  in  the  truth  of  evolution,  that  no  extent 
of  structural  break  between  one  animal  and  another  is 
sufficient  to  destroy  his  conviction  that  evolution  has 
taken  place. 

But  this  by  the  way.  The  importance  of  the 
admission  that  there  is  nothing  in  man's  physical 
structure  to  interfere  with  his  having  been  evolved  from 
an  ape,  is  not  lessened  because  it  is  grudgingly  made 
and  inconsistently  qualified.  And  instead  of  jubilating 
over  the  extent  of  the  enemy's  retreat,  it  will  be  more 
worth  while  to  lay  siege  to  his  last  stronghold — the 
position  that  there  is  a  distinction  in  kind  between  the 
mental  faculties  of  man  and  those  of  brutes ;  and  that, 
in  consequence  of  this  distinction  in  kind,  no  gradual 
progress  from  the  mental  faculties  of  the  one  to  those  of 
the  other  can  have  taken  place. 

The  Quarterly  Ke viewer  entrenches  himself  within 
formidable-looking  psychological  outworks,  and  there 
is  no  getting  at  him  without  attacking  them  one  by  one. 


x.]  ME.  DARWIN'S 

He  begins  by  laying  down  the 
"  '  Sensation '  is  not  '  thought/  anonoamount  of 
the  former  would  constitute  the  most  rudimentary 
condition  of  the  latter,  though  sensations  supply  the 
conditions  for  the  existence  of  'thought*  or  'know- 
ledge' '  (p.  67). 

This  proposition  is  true,  or  not,  according  to  the  sense 
in  which  the  word  "  thought "  is  employed.  Thought  is 
not  uncommonly  used  in  a  sense  co-extensive  with 
consciousness,  and,  especially,  with  those  states  of 
consciousness  we  call  memory.  If  I  recall  the  impres- 
sion made  by  a  colour  or  an  odour,  and  distinctly 
remember  blueness  or  muskiness,  I  may  say  with  perfect 
propriety  that  I  "think  of"  blue  or  musk;  and,  so 
long  as  the  thought  lasts,  it  is  simply  a  faint  repro- 
duction of  the  state  of  consciousness  to  which  I  gave 
the  name  in  question,  when  it  first  became  known  to  me 
as  a  sensation. 

Now,  if  that  faint  reproduction  of  a  sensation,  which 
we  call  the  memory  of  it,  is  properly  termed  a  thought, 
it  seems  to  me  to  be  a  somewhat  forced  proceeding  to 
draw  a  hard  and  fast  line  of  demarcation  between 
thoughts  and  sensations.  If  sensations  are  not  rudi- 
mentary thoughts,  it  may  be  said  that  some  thoughts 
are  rudimentary  sensations.  No  amount  of  sound  con- 
stitutes an  echo,  but  for  all  that  no  one  would  pretend 
that  an  echo  is  something  of  totally  different  nature 
from  a  sound.  Again,  nothing  can  be  looser,  or  more 
inaccurate,  than  the  assertion  that  "sensations  supply 
the  conditions  for  the  existence  of  thought  or  know- 
ledge." If  this  implies  that  sensations  supply  the 
conditions  for  the  existence  of  our  memory  of  sensa- 
tions or  of  our  thoughts  about  sensations,  it  is  a  truism 
which  it  is  hardly  worth  while  to  state  so  solemnly. 
If  it  implies  that  sensations  supply  anything  else,  it  is 


244  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x. 

obviously  erroneous.  And  if  it  means,  as  the  context 
would  seem  to  show  it  does,  that  sensations  are  the 
subject-matter  of  all  thought  or  knowledge,  then  it  is 
no  less  contrary  to  fact,  inasmuch  as  our  emotions,  which 
constitute  a  large  part  of  the  subject-matter  of  thought 
or  of  knowledge,  are  not  sensations. 

More  eccentric  still  is  the  Quarterly  Ee viewer's  next 
piece  of  psychology. 

"  Altogether,  we  may  clearly  distinguish  at  least  six  kinds  of  action 
to  which  the  nervous  system  ministers  : — 

"  I.  That  in  which  impressions  received  result  in  appropriate 
movements  without  the  intervention  of  sensation  or  thought,  as  in 
the  cases  of  injury  above  given. — This  is  the  reflex  action  of  the 
nervous  system. 

"II.  That  in  which  stimuli  from  without  result  in  sensations 
through  the  agency  of  which  their  due  effects  are  wrought  out. 
—Sensation. 

"  III.  That  in  which  impressions  received  result  in  sensations  which 
give  rise  to  the  observation  of  sensible  objects. — Sensible  perception. 

"IV.  That  in  which  sensations  and  perceptions  continue  to 
coalesce,  agglutinate,  and  combine  in  more  or  less  complex  aggre- 
gations, according  to  the  laws  of  the  association  of  sensible  percep- 
tions.— Association. 

"  The  above  four  groups  contain  only  indeliberate  operations,  con- 
sisting, as  they  do  at  the  best,  but  of  mere  presentative  sensible  ideas 
in  no  way  implying  any  reflective  or  representative  faculty.  Such 
actions  minister  to  and  form  Instinct.  Besides  these,  we  may  dis- 
tinguish two  other  kinds  of  mental  action,  namely  : — 

"  Y.  That  in  which  sensations  and  sensible  perceptions  are  reflected 
on  by  thought,  and  recognized  as  our  own,  and  we  ourselves  recognized 
by  ourselves  as  affected  and  perceiving. — Self-consciousness. 

"  VI.  That  in  which  we  reflect  upon  our 'sensations  or  perceptions, 
and  ask  what  they  are,  and  why  they  are. — Eeason. 

"  These  two  latter  kinds  of  action  are  deliberate  operations,  per- 
formed, as  they  are,  by  means  of  representative  ideas  implying  the 
use  of  a  reflective  representative  faculty.  Such  actions  distinguish 
the  intellect  or  rational  faculty.  Now,  we  assert  that  possession  in 
perfection  of  all  the  first  four  (presentative)  kinds  of  action  by  no 
means  implies  the  possession  of  the  last  two  (representative)  kinds. 
All  persons,  we  think,  must  admit  the  truth  of  the  following 
proposition  : — 


x.]  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS.  245 

"Two  faculties  are  distinct,  not  in  degree  but  in  kind,  if  we  may 
possess  the  one  in  perfection  without  that  fact  implying  that  we  possess 
the  other  also.  Still  more  will  this  be  the  case  if  the  two  faculties 
tend  to  increase  in  an  inverse  ratio.  Yet  this  is  the  distinction 
between  the  instinctive  and  the  intellectual  parts  of  man's  nature. 

"As  to  animals,  we  fully  admit  that  they  may  possess  all  the  first 
four  groups  of  actions — that  they  may  have,  so  to  speak,  mental 
images  of  sensible  objects  combined  in  all  degrees  of  complexity,  as 
governed  by  the  laws  of  association.  We  deny  to  them,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  possession  of  the  last  two  kinds  of  mental  action.  We  deny 
them,  that  is,  the  power  of  reflecting  on  their  own  existence,  or  of 
inquiring  into  the  nature  of  objects  and  their  causes.  We  deny  that 
they  know  that  they  know  or  know  themselves  in  knowing.  In  other 
words,  we  deny  them  reason.  The  possession  of  the  presentative 
faculty,  as  above  explained,  in  no  way  implies  that  of  the  reflective 
faculty ;  nor  does  any  amount  of  direct  operation  imply  the  power  of 
asking  the  reflective  question  before  mentioned,  as  to  *  what '  and 
'  why.'  "  (Loc.  cit.  pp.  67,  68.) 

Sundry  points  are  worthy  of  notice  in  this  remarkable 
account  of  the  intellectual  powers.  In  the  first  place 
the  Keviewer  ignores  emotion  and  volition,  though  they 
are  no  inconsiderable  "kinds  of  action  to  which  the 
nervous  system  ministers,"  and  memory  has  a  place  in 
his  classification  only  by  implication.  Secondly,  we  are 
told  that  the  second  "  kind  of  action  to  which  the 
nervous  system  ministers "  is  "  that  in  which  stimuli 
from  without  result  in  sensations  through  the  agency  of 
which  their  due  effects  are  wrought  out. — Sensation." 
Does  this  really  mean  that,  in  the  writer's  opinion, 
"sensation"  is  the  "agent"  by  which  the  "due  effect" 
of  the  stimulus,  which  gives  rise  to  sensation,  is 
"wrought  out"?  Suppose  somebody  runs  a  pin  into 
me.  The  "due  effect"  of  that  particular  stimulus  will 
probably  be  threefold ;  namely,  a  sensation  of  pain,  a 
start,  and  an  interjectional  expletive.  Does  the 
Quarterly  Ee viewer  really  think  that  the  "  sensation  "  i? 
the  "agent"  by  which  the  other  two  phenomena  are 
wrought  out  ? 


246  CRITIQUES  AN~D  ADDRESSES.  [x. 

But  these  matters  are  of  little  moment  to  anyone  but 
the  Eeviewer  and  those  persons  who  may  incautiously 
take  their  physiology,  or  psychology,  from  him.  The 
really  interesting  point  is  this,  that  when  he  fully 
admits  that  animals  "may  possess  all  the  first  four 
groups  of  actions,"  he  grants  all  that  is  necessary  for  the 
purposes  of  the  evolutionist.  For  he  hereby  admits  that 
in  animals  "impressions  received  result  in  sensations 
which  give  rise  to  the  observation  of  sensible  objects," 
and  that  they  have  what  he  calls  "  sensible  perception/' 
Nor  was  it  possible  to  help  the  admission ;  for  we  have 
as  much  reason  to  ascribe  to  animals,  as  we  have  to 
attribute  to  our  fellow-men,  the  power,  not  only  of  per- 
ceiving external  objects  as  external,  and  thus  practically 
recognizing  the  difference  between  the  self  and  the  not- 
self;  but  that  of  distinguishing  between  like  and  unlike, 
and  between  simultaneous  and  successive  things.  When 
a  gamekeeper  goes  out  coursing  with  a  greyhound,  in 
leash,  and  a  hare  crosses  the  field  of  vision,  he  becomes 
the  subject  of  those  states  of  consciousness  we  call  visual 
sensation,  and  that  is  all  he  receives  from  without. 
Sensation,  as  such,  tells  him  nothing  whatever  about  the 
cause  of  these  states  of  consciousness ;  but  the  thinking 
faculty  instantly  goes  to  work  upon  the  raw  material  of 
sensation  furnished  to  it  through  the  eye,  and  gives  rise 
to  a  train  of  thoughts.  First  comes  the  thought  that 
there  is  an  object  at  a  certain  distance ;  then  arises 
another  thought— the  perception  of  the  likeness  between 
the  states  of  consciousness  awakened  by  this  object  to 
those  presented  by  memory,  as,  on  some  former  occasion, 
called  up  by  a  hare  ;  this  is  succeeded  by  another  thought 
of  the  nature  of  an  emotion — namely,  the  desire  to 
possess  the  hare ;  then  follows  a  longer  or  shorter  train  of 
other  thoughts,  which  end  in  a  volition  and  an  act — the 
loosing  of  the  greyhound  from  the  leash.  These  several 


[x.  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS.  247 

thoughts  arc  the  concomitants  of  a  process  which  goes 
on  in  the  nervous  system  of  the  man.  Unless  the 
nerve-elements  of  the  retina,  of  the  optic  nerve,  of  the 
brain,  of  the  spinal  chord,  and  of  the  nerves  of  the 
arms  went  through  certain  physical  changes  in  due 
order  and  correlation,  the  various  states  of  consciousness 
which  have  been  enumerated  would  not  make  their 
appearance.  So  that  in  this,  as  in  all  other  intellectual 
operations,  we  have  to  distinguish  two  sets  of  successive 
changes — one  in  the  physical  basis  of  consciousness,  and 
the  other  in  consciousness  itself ;  one  set  which  may, 
and  doubtless  will,  in  course  of  time,  be  followed 
through  all  their  complexities  by  the  anatomist  and  the 
physicist,  and  one  of  which  only  the  man  himself  can 
have  immediate  knowledge. 

As  it  is  very  necessary  to  keep  up  a  clear  distinction 
between  these  two  processes,  let  the  one  be  called 
neurosis,  and  the  other  psychosis.  When  the  game- 
keeper was  first  trained  to  his  work,  every  step  in  the 
process  of  neurosis  was  accompanied  by  a  correspond- 
ing step  in  that  of  psychosis,  or  nearly  so.  He  was 
conscious  of  seeing  something,  conscious  of  making  sure 
it  was  a  hare,  conscious  of  desiring  to  catch  it,  and 
therefore  to  loose  the  greyhound  at  the  right  time, 
conscious  of  the  acts  by  which  he  let  the  dog  out  of  the 
leash.  But  with  practice,  though  the  various  steps  of 
the  neurosis  remain — for  otherwise  the  impression  on  the 
retina  would  not  result  in  the  loosing  of  the  dog — the 
great  majority  of  the  steps  of  the  psychosis  vanish,  and 
the  loosing  of  the  dog  follows  unconsciously,  or  as  we 
say,  without  thinking  about  it,  upon  the  sight  of  the 
hare.  No  one  will  deny  that  the  series  of  acts  which 
originally  intervened  between  the  sensation  and  the 
letting  go  of  the  dog  were,  in  the  strictest  sense,  intel- 
lectual and  rational  operations.  Do  they  cease  to  be  so 


248  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x. 

when  the  man  ceases  to  be  conscious  of  them  \  That 
depends  upon  what  is  the  essence  and  what  the  accident 
of  those  operations,  which,  taken  together,  constitute 
ratiocination. 

Now  ratiocination  is  resolvable  into  predication,  and 
predication  consists  in  marking,  in  some  way,  the  exist- 
ence, the  coexistence,  the  succession,  the  likeness  and 
unlikeness,  of  things  or  their  ideas.  Whatever  does 
this,  reasons ;  and  if  a  machine  produces  the  effects  of 
reason,  I  see  no  more  ground  for  denying  to  it  the 
reasoning  power,  because  it  is  unconscious,  than  I  see 
for  refusing  to  Mr.  Babbage's  engine  the  title  of  a 
calculating  machine  on  the  same  grounds. 

Thus  it  seems  to  me  that  a  gamekeeper  reasons, 
whether  he  is  conscious  or  unconscious,  whether  his 
reasoning  is  carried  on  by  neurosis  alone,  or  whether 
it  involves  more  or  less  psychosis.  And  if  this  is  true 
of  the  gamekeeper,  it  is  also  true  of  the  greyhound. 
The  essential  resemblances  in  all  points  of  structure 
and  function,  so  far  as  they  can  be  studied,  between 
the  nervous  system  of  the  man  and  that  of  the  dog, 
leave  no  reasonable  doubt  that  the  processes  w^hich  go 
on  in  the  one  are  just  like  those  which  take  place  in 
the  other.  In  the  dog,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
nervous  matter  which  lies  between  the  retina  and  the 
muscles  undergoes  a  series  of  changes,  precisely  analogous 
to  those  which,  in  the  man,  give  rise  to  sensation,  a  train 
of  thought,  and  volition. 

Whether  this  neurosis  is  accompanied  by  such  psycho- 
sis as  ours,  it  is  impossible  to  say ;  but  those  who  deny 
that  tlfe  nervous  changes,  which,  in  the  dog,  correspond 
with  those  which  underlie  thought  in  a  man,  are  accom- 
panied by  consciousness,  are  equally  bound  to  maintain 
that  those  nervous  changes  in  the  dog,  which  correspond 
with  those  which  underlie  sensation  in  a  man,  are  also 


T.]  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS.  249 

unaccompanied  by  consciousness.  In  other  words,  if 
there  is  no  ground  for  believing  that  a  clog  thinks, 
neither  is  there  any  for  believing  that  he  feels. 

As  is  well  known,  Descartes  boldly  faced  this  dilemma, 
and  maintained  that  all  animals  were  mere  machines  and 
entirely  devoid  of  consciousness.  But  he  did  not  deny, 
nor  can  anyone  deny,  that  in  this  case  they  are  reason- 
ing machines,  capable  of  performing  all  those  operations 
which  are  performed  by  the  nervous  system  of  man 
when  he  reasons.  For  even  supposing  that  in  man, 
and  in  man  only,  psychosis  is  superadded  to  neurosis 
— the  neurosis  which  is  common  to  both  man  and 
animal  gives  their  reasoning  processes  a  fundamental 
unity.  But  Descartes's  position  is  open  to  very  serious 
objections,  if  the  evidence  that  animals  feel  is  insuf- 
ficient to  prove  that  they  really  do  so.  What  is  the 
value  of  the  evidence  which  leads  one  to  believe  that 
one's  fellow-man  feels  ?  The  only  evidence  in  this 
argument  of  analogy,  is  the  similarity  of  his  structure 
and  of  his  actions  to  one's  own.  And  if  that  is  good 
enough  to  prove  that  one's  fellow-man  feels,  surely  it  is 
good  enough  to  prove  that  an  ape  feels.  For  the  differ- 
ences of  structure  and  function  between  men  and  apes  are 
utterly  insufficient  to  warrant  the  assumption,  that  while 
men  have  those  states  of  consciousness  we  call  sensations, 
apes  have  nothing  of  the  kind.  Moreover,  we  have  as 
good  evidence  that  apes  are  capable  of  emotion  and 
volition  as  we  have  that  men  other  than  ourselves  are. 
But  if  apes  possess  three  out  of  the  four  kinds  of  states 
of  consciousness  which  we  discover  in  ourselves,  what 
possible  reason  is  there  for  denying  them  the  'fourth  ? 
If  they  are  capable  of  sensation,  emotion,  and  volition, 
why  are  they  to  be  denied  thought  (in  the  sense  of 
predication)  \ 

No  answer  has  ever  been  given  to  these  questions. 


250  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x. 

And  as  the  law  of  continuity  is  as  much  opposed,  as  is 
the  common  sense  of  mankind,  to  the  notion  that  all 
animals  are  unconscious  machines,  it  may  safely  be 
assumed  that  no  sufficient  answer  ever  will  be  given 
to  them. 

There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  consciousness  is  a 
function  of  nervous  matter,  when  that  nervous  matter 
has  attained  a  certain  degree  of  organization,  just  as  we 
know  the  other  "  actions  to  which  the  nervous  system 
ministers,"  such  as  reflex  action  and  the  like,  to  be.  As 
I  have  ventured  to  state  my  view  of  the  matter  else- 
where, "  our  thoughts  are  the  expression  of  molecular 
changes  in  that  matter  of  life  which  is  the  source  of 
our  other  vital  phenomena." 

Mr.  Wallace  objects  to  this  statement  in  the  following 
terms : — 

"Not  having  been  able  to  find  any  clue  in  Professor  Huxley's 
writings  to  the  steps  by  -which  he  passes  from  those  vital  phenomena, 
which  consist  only,  in  their  last  analysis,  of  movements  by  particles  of 
matter,  to  those  other  phenomena  which  we  term  thought,  sensation, 
or  consciousness ;  but,  knowing  that  so  positive  an  expression  of  opinion 
from  him  will  have  great  weight  with  many  persons,  I  shall  endeavour 
to  show,  with  as  much  brevity  as  is  compatible  with  clearness,  that 
this  theory  is  not  only  incapable  of  proof,  but  is  also,  as  it  appears  to 
me,  inconsistent  with  accurate  conceptions  of  molecular  physics." 

With  all  respect  for  Mr.  Wallace,  it  appears  to  me  that 
his  remarks  are  entirely  beside  the  question.  I  really 
know  nothing  whatever,  and  never  hope  to  know  any- 
thing, of  the  steps  by  which  the  passage  from  molecular 
movement  to  states  of  consciousness  is  effected  ;  and  I 
entirely  agree  with  the  sense  of  the  passage  which  he 
quotes  from  Professor  Tyndall,  apparently  imagining  that 
it  is  in  opposition  to  the  view  I  hold. 

All  that  I  have  to  say  is,  that,  in  my  belief,  conscious- 
ness and  molecular  action  are  capable  of  being  expressed 
by  one  another,  just  as  heat  and  mechanical  action  are 


x.]  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS.  251 

capable  of  being  expressed  in  terms  of  one  another. 
Whether  we  shall  ever  be  able  to  express  consciousness 
in  foot-pounds,  or  not,  is  more  than  I  will  venture  to 
say ;  but  that  there  is  evidence  of  the  existence  of  some 
correlation  between  mechanical  motion  and  conscious- 
ness, is  as  plain  as  anything  can  be.  Suppose  the  poles 
of  an  electric  battery  to  be  connected  by  a  platinum 
wire.  A  certain  intensity  of  the  current  gives  rise  in 
the  mind  of  a  bystander  to  that  state  of  consciousness  we 
call  a  "dull  red  light"  —  a  little  greater  intensity  to 
another  which  we  call  a  "  bright  red  light ; "  increase 
the  intensity,  and  the  light  becomes  white  ;  and,  finally, 
it  dazzles,  and  a  new  state  of  consciousness  arises,  which 
we  term  pain.  Given  the  same  wire  and  the  same 
nervous  apparatus,  and  the  amount  of  electric  force  re- 
quired to  give  rise  to  these  several  states  of  consciousness 
will  be  the  same,  however  often  the  experiment  is  re- 
peated. And  as  the  electric  force,  the  light-waves,  and 
the  nerve-vibrations  caused  by  the  impact  of  the  light- 
waves on  the  retina,  are  all  expressions  of  the  molecular 
changes  which  are  taking  place  in  the  elements  of  the 
battery  ;  so  consciousness  is,  in  the  same  sense,  an  ex- 
pression of  the  molecular  changes  which  take  place 
in  that  nervous  matter,  which  is  the  organ  of  con- 
sciousness. 

And,  since  this,  and  any  number  of  similar  examples 
that  may  be  required,  prove  that  one  form  of  conscious- 
ness, at  any  rate,  is,  in  the  strictest  sense,  the  expression 
of  molecular  change,  it  really  is  not  worth  while  to 
pursue  the  inquiry,  whether  a  fact  so  easily  established 
is  consistent  with  any  particular  system  of  molecular 
physics  or  not. 

Mr.  Wallace,  in  fact,  appears  to  me  to  have  mixed  up 
two  very  distinct  propositions  :  the  one,  the  indisputable 
truth  that  consciousness  is  correlated  with  molecular 
12 


252  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x. 

changes  in  the  organ  of  consciousness ;  the  other,  that 
the  nature  of  that  correlation  is  known,  or  can  be  con- 
ceived, which  is  quite  another  matter.  Mr.  Wallace, 
presumably,  believes  in  that  correlation  of  phenomena 
which  we  call  cause  and  effect  as  firmly  as  I  do.  But 
if  he  has  ever  been  able  to  form  the  faintest  notion  how 
a  cause  gives  rise  to  its  effect,  all  I  can  say  is  that  I 
envy  him.  Take  the  simplest  case  imaginable — suppose 
a  ball  in  motion  to  impinge  upon  another  ball  at  rest. 
I  know  very  well,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  that  the  ball  in 
motion  will  communicate  some  of  its  motion  to  the  ball 
at  rest,  and  that  the  motion  of  the  two  balls  after  col- 
lision is  precisely  correlated  with  the  masses  of  both 
balls  and  the  amount  of  motion  of  the  first.  But  how 
does  this  come  about  ?  In  what  manner  can  we  conceive 
that  the  vis  viva  of  the  first  ball  passes  into  the  second  ? 
I  confess  I  can  no  more  form  any  conception  of  what 
happens  in  this  case,  than  I  can  of  what  takes  place 
when  the  motion  of  particles  of  my  nervous  matter, 
caused  by  the  impact  of  a  similar  ball,  gives  rise  to  the 
state  of  consciousness  I  call  pain.  In  ultimate  analysis 
everything  is  incomprehensible,  and  the  whole  object 
of  science  is  simply  to  reduce  the  fundamental  incom- 
prehensibilities to  the  smallest  possible  number. 

But  to  return  to  the  Quarterly  He  viewer.  He  admits 
that  animals  have  "mental  images  of  sensible  objects, 
combined  in  all  degrees  of  complexity,  as  governed  by 
the  laws  of  association."  Presumably,  by  this  confused 
and  imperfect  statement  the  Eeviewer  means  to  admit 
more  than  the  words  imply.  For  mental  images  of  sen- 
sible objects,  even  though  "  combined  in  all  degrees  of 
complexity,"  are,  and  can  be,  nothing  more  than  mental 
images  of  sensible  objects.  But  judgments,  emotions, 
and  volitions  cannot  by  any  possibility  be  included 
under  the  head  of  "  mental  images  of  sensible  objects." 


x.]  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS.  253 

If  the  greyhound  had  no  better  mental  endowment  than 
the  Reviewer  allows  him,  he  might  have  the  "  mental 
image"  of  the  "sensible  object" — the  hare — and  that 
might  be  combined  with  the  mental  images  of  other 
sensible  objects,  to  any  degree  of  complexity,  but  he 
would  have  no  power  of  judging  it  to  be  at  a  certain 
distance  from  him ;  no  power  of  perceiving  its  similarity 
to  his  memory  of  a  hare  ;  and  no  desire  to  get  at  it. 
Consequently  he  would  stand  stock  still,  and  the  noble 
art  of  coursing  would  have  no  existence.  On  the  other 
hand,  as  that  art  is  largely  practised,  it  follows  that 
greyhounds  alone  possess  a  number  of  mental  powers, 
the  existence  of  which,  in  any  animal,  is  absolutely 
denied  by  the  Quarterly  Reviewer. 

Finally,  what  are  the  mental  powers  which  he  reserves 
as  the  especial  prerogative  of  man  ?  They  are  two. 
First,  the  recognition  of  "ourselves  by  ourselves  as 
affected  and  perceiving. — Self- consciousness/' 

Secondly.  "  The  reflection  upon  our  sensations  and 
perceptions,  and  asking  what  they  are  and  why  they 
are. — Reason." 

To  the  faculty  defined  in  the  last  sentence,  the 
Reviewer,  without  assigning  the  least  ground  for  thus 
departing  from  both  common  usaga  and  technical  pro- 
priety, applies  the  name  of  reason.  But  if  man  is  not 
to  be  considered  a  reasoning  being,  unless  he  asks  what 
his  sensations  and  perceptions  are,  and  why  they  are, 
what  is  a  Hottentot,  or  an  Australian  black  fellow  ;  or 
what  the  "swinked  hedger"  of  an  ordinary  agricultural 
district  ?  Nay,  what  becomes  of  an  average  country 
squire  or  parson  ?  How  many  of  these  worthy  persons 
who,  as  their  wont  is,  read  the  Quarterly  Revieiv,  would 
do  other  than  stand  agape,  if  you  asked  them  whether 
they  had  ever  reflected  what  their  sensations  and  per- 
ceptions are,  and  why  they  are  ? 


254  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x. 

So  that  if  the  Reviewer's  new  definition  of  reason  be 
correct,  the  majority  of  men,  even  among  the  most 
civilized  nations,  are  devoid  of  that  supreme  character- 
istic of  manhood.  And  if  it  be  as  absurd  as  I  believe 
it  to  be,  then,  as  reason  is  certainly  not  self-consciousness, 
and  as  it,  as  certainly,  is  one  of  the  "  actions  to  which 
the  nervous  system  ministers/'  we  must,  if  the  Reviewer's 
classification  is  to  be  adopted,  seek  it  among  those  four 
faculties  which  he  allows  animals  to  possess.  And  thus, 
for  the  second,  time,  he  really  surrenders,  while  seeming 
to  defend,  his  position. 

The  Quarterly  Reviewer,  as  we  have  seen,  lectures  the 
evolutionists  upon  their  want  of  knowledge  of  philosophy 
altogether.  Mr.  Mivart  is  not  less  pained  at  Mr.  Darwin's 
ignorance  of  moral  science.  It  is  grievous  to  him  that 
Mr.  Darwin  (and  nous  autres)  should  not  have  grasped 
the  elementary  distinction  between  material  and  formal 
morality ;  and  he  lays  down  as  an  axiom,  of  which  no 
tyro  ought  to  be  ignorant,  the  position  that  "  acts,  un- 
accompanied by  mental  acts  of  conscious  will  directed 
towards  the  fulfilment  of  duty,"  are  "absolutely  desti- 
tute of  the  most  incipient  degree  of  real  or  formal 
goodness." 

Now  this  may  be  Mr.  Mivart's  opinion,  but  it  is  a 
proposition  which,  really,  does  not  stand  on  the  footing 
of  an  undisputed  axiom.  Mr.  Mill  denies  it  in  his  work 
on  Utilitarianism.  The  most  influential  writer  of  a 
totally  opposed  school,  Mr.  Carlyle,  is  never  weary  of 
denying  it,  and  upholding  the  merit  of  that  virtue 
which  is  unconscious ;  nay,  it  is,  to  my  understanding, 
extremely  hard  to  reconcile  Mr.  Mivart's  dictum  with 
that  noble  summary  of  the  whole  duty  of  man — "  Thou 
shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart,  and 
with  all  thy  soul,  and  with  all  thy  strength  ;  and  thou 
shalt  love  thy  neighbour  as  thyself."  According  to 


x.]  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS.  255 

Mr.  Mivart's  definition,  the  man  who  loves  God  and  his 
neighbour,  and,  out  of  sheer  love  and  affection  for  both, 
does  all  he  can  to  please  them,  is,  nevertheless,  destitute 
of  a  particle  of  real  goodness. 

And  it  further  happens  that  Mr.  Darwin,  who  is 
charged  by  Mr.  Mivart  with  being  ignorant  of  the  dis- 
tinction between  material  and  formal  goodness,  discusses 
the  very  question  at  issue,  in  a  passage  which  is  well 
worth  reading  (vol.  i.  p.  87),  and  also  comes  to  a  con- 
clusion opposed  to  Mr.  Mivart's  axiom.  A  proposition 
which  has  been  so  much  disputed  and  repudiated,  should, 
under  no  circumstances,  have  been  thus  confidently 
assumed  to  be  true.  For  myself,  I  utterly  reject  it,  inas- 
much as  the  logical  consequence  of  the  adoption  of  any 
such  principle  is  the  denial  of  all  moral  value  to  sym- 
pathy and  affection.  According  to  Mr.  Mivart's  axiom, 
the  man  who,  seeing  another  struggling  in  the  water, 
leaps  in  at  the  risk  of  his  own  life  to  save  him,  does  that 
which  is  "destitute  of  the  most  incipient  degree  of  real 
goodness,"  unless,  as  he  strips  off  his  coat,  he  says  to 
himself,  "Now  mind,  I  am  going  to  do  this  because  it  is 
my  duty  and  for  no  other  reason ;"  and  the  most  beauti- 
ful character  to  which  humanity  can  attain,  that  of  the 
man  who  does  good  without  thinking  about  it,  because 
he  loves  justice  and  mercy  and  is  repelled  by  evil,  has  no 
claim  on  our  moral  approbation.  The  denial  that  a  man 
acts  morally  because  he  does  not  think  whether  he  does 
so  or  not,  may  be  put  upon  the  same  footing  as  the  denial 
of  the  title  of  an  arithmetician  to  the  calculating  boy, 
because  he  did  not  know  how  he  worked  his  sums.  If 
mankind  ever  generally  accept  and  act  upon  Mr.  Mivart's 
axiom,  they  will  simply  become  a  set  of  most  unendurable 
prigs  ;  but  they  never  have  accepted  it,  and  I  venture  to 
hope  that  evolution  has  nothing  so  terrible  in  store  for 
the  human  race. 


256  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x. 

But,  if  an  action,  the  motive  of  which  is  nothing  out 
affection  or  sympathy,  may  be  deserving  of  moral  appro- 
bation and  really  good,  who  that  has  ever  had  a  dog  of 
his  own  will  deny  that  animals  are  capable  of  such 
actions  ?  Mr.  Mivart  indeed  says  : — "  It  may  be  safely 
affirmed,  however,  that  there  is  no  trace  in  brutes  of  any 
actions  simulating  morality  which  are  not  explicable  by 
the  fear  of  punishment,  by  the  hope  of  pleasure,  or  by 
personal  affection"  (p.  221).  But  it  may  be  affirmed,  with 
equal  truth,  that  there  is  no  trace  in  men  of  any  actions 
which  are  not  traceable  to  the  same  motives.  If  a  man 
does  anything,  he  does  it  either  because  he  fears  to  be 
punished  if  he  does  not  do  it,  or  because  he  hopes  to 
obtain  pleasure  by  doing  it,  or  because  he  gratifies  his 
affections l  by  doing  it. 

Assuming  the  position  of  the  absolute  moralists,  let  it 
be  granted  that  there  is  a  perception  of  right  and  wrong 
innate  in  every  man.  This  means,  simply,  that  when 
certain  ideas  are  presented  to  his  mind,  the  feeling  of 
approbation  arises ;  and  when  certain  others,  the  feeling 
of  disapprobation.  To  do  your  duty  is  to  earn  the  appro- 
bation of  your  conscience,  or  moral  sense  ;  to  fail  in  your 
duty  is  to  feel  its  disapprobation,  as  we  all  say.  Now,  is 
approbation  a  pleasure  or  a  pain  ?  Surely  a  pleasure. 
And  is  disapprobation  a  pleasure  or  a  pain  ?  Surely  a 
pain.  Consequently  all  that  is  really  meant  by  the  abso- 
lute moralists  is  that  there  is,  in  the  very  nature  of  man, 
something  which  enables  him  to  be  conscious  of  these 
particular  pleasures  and  pains.  And  when  they  talk  of 
immutable  and  eternal  principles  of  morality,  the  only 
intelligible  sense  which  I  can  put  upon  the  words,  is  that 
the  nature  of  man  being  what  it  is,  he  always  has  been, 
and  always  will  be,  capable  of  feeling  these  particular 

1  In  separating  pleasure  and  the  gratification  of  affection,  I  simply  follow 
Mr.  Mivart  without  admitting  the  justice  of  the  separation. 


x.]  M&  DARWIWS  CRITICS.  257 

pleasures  and  pains.  A  priori,  I  have  nothing  to  say 
against  this  proposition.  Admitting  its  truth,  I  do  not 
see  how  the  moral  faculty  is  on  a  different  footing  from 
any  of  the  other  faculties  of  man.  If  I  choose  to  say 
that  it  is  an  immutable  and  eternal  law  of  human  nature 
that  "  ginger  is  hot  in  the  mouth,"  the  assertion  has  as 
much  foundation  of  truth  as  the  other,  though  I  think  it 
would  be  expressed  in  needlessly  pompous  language.  I 
must  confess  that  I  have  never  been  able  to  understand 
why  there  should  be  such  a  bitter  quarrel  between  the 
intuitionists  and  the  utilitarians.  The  intuitionist  is,  after 
all,  only  a  utilitarian  who  believes  that  a  particular  class 
of  pleasures  and  pains  has  an  especial  importance,  by 
reason  of  its  foundation  in  the  nature  of  man,  and  its 
inseparable  connection  with  his  very  existence  as  a 
thinking  being.  And  as  regards  the  motive  of  personal 
affection  :  Love,  as  Spinoza  profoundly  says,  is  the  asso- 
ciation of  pleasure  with  that  which  is  loved.1  Or,  to 
put  it  to  the  common  sense  of  mankind,  is  the  gratifica- 
tion of  affection  a  pleasure  or  a  pain  ?  Purely  a  pleasure. 
So  that  whether  the  motive  which  leads  us  to  perform 
an  action  is  the  love  of  our  neighbour,  or  the  love  of  God, 
it  is  undeniable  that  pleasure  enters  into  that  motive. 

Thus  much  in  reply  to  Mr.  Mivart's  arguments.  I 
cannot  but  think  that  it  is  to  be  regretted  that  he  ekes 
them  out  by  ascribing  to  the  doctrines  of  the  philo- 
sophers with  whom  he  does  not  agree,  logical  con- 
sequences which  have  been  over  and  over  again  proved 
not  to  flow  from  them :  and  when  reason  fails  him,  tries 
the  effect  of  an  injurious  nickname.  According  to  the 
views  of  Mr.  Spencer,  Mr.  Mill,  and  Mr.  Darwin,  Mr. 
Mivart  tells  us,  "  virtue  is  a  mere  kind  of  retrieving ;." 
and,  that  we  may  not  miss  the  point  of  the  joke,  he 

1  "  Nerape,  Amor  nihil  aliud  est,  quam  Laetitia,  concomitante  idea  causas 
externae." — Ethices,  III.  xiii. 


258  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x. 

puts  it  in  italics.  But  what  if  it  is  \  Does  that  make 
it  less  virtue  ?  Suppose  I  say  that  sculpture  is  a  "  mere 
way  "  of  stone-cutting,  and  painting  a  "  mere  way  "  of 
daubing  canvas,  and  music  a  "  mere  way  "  of  making  a 
noise,  the  statements  are  quite  true  ;  but  they  only  show 
that  I  see  no  other  method  of  depreciating  some  of  the 
noblest  aspects  of  humanity,  than  that  of  using  language 
in  an  inadequate  and  misleading  sense  about  them.  And 
the  peculiar  in  appropriateness  of  this  particular  nickname 
to  the  views  in  question,  arises  from  the  circumstance 
which  Mr.  Mivart  would  doubtless  have  recollected,  if 
his  wish  to  ridicule  had  not  for  the  moment  obscured 
his  judgment— that  whether  the  law  of  evolution  applies 
to  man  or  not,  that  of  hereditary  transmission  certainly 
does.  Mr.  Mivart  wdll  hardly  deny  that  a  man  owes 
a  large  share  of  the  moral  tendencies  which  he  exhibits 
to  his  ancestors ;  and  the  man  who  inherits  a  desire  to 
steal  from  a  kleptomaniac,  or  a  tendency  to  benevolence 
from  a  Howard,  is,  so  far  as  he  illustrates  hereditary 
transmission,  comparable  to  the  dog  who  inherits  the 
desire  to  fetch  a  duck  out  of  the  water  from  his  re- 
trieving sire.  So  that,  evolution,  or  no  evolution,  moral 
qualities  are  comparable  to  a  "kind  of  retrieving;" 
though  the  comparison,  if  meant  for  the  purposes  of 
casting  obloquy  on  evolution,  does  not  say  much  for 
the  fairness  of  those  who  make  it. 

The  Quarterly  Keviewer  and  Mr.  Mivart  base  their 
objections  to  the  evolution  of  the  mental  faculties  of 
man  from  those  of  some  lower  animal  form,  upon  what 
they  maintain  to  be  a  difference  in  kind  between  the 
mental  and  moral  faculties  of  men  and  brutes ;  and 
I  have  endeavoured  to  show,  by  exposing  the  utter 
unsoundness  of  their  philosophical  basis,  that  these 
objections  are  devoid  of  importance. 

The  objections  which  Mr.  Wallace  brings  forward  to 


x,]  MR  DARWIN'S  CRITICS.  259 

the  doctrine  of  the  evolution  of  the  mental  faculties  of 
man  from  those  of  brutes  by  natural  causes,  are  of  a 
different  order,  and  require  separate  consideration. 

If  I  understand  him  rightly,  he  by  no  means  doubts 
that  both  the  bodily  and  the  mental  faculties  of  man  have 
been  evolved  from  those  of  some  lower  animal ;  but  he 
is  of  opinion,  that  some  agency  beyond  that  which  has 
been  concerned  in  the  evolution  of  ordinary  animals,  has 
been  operative  in  the  case  of  man.  "  A  superior  intelli- 
gence has  guided  the  development  of  man  in  a  definite 
direction  and  for  a  special  purpose,  just  as  man  guides 
the  development  of  many  animal  and  vegetable  forms."  1 
I  understand  this  to  mean  that,  just  as  the  rock-pigeon 
has  been  produced  by  natural  causes,  while  the  evolution 
of  the  tumbler  from  the  blue  rock  has  required  the 
special  intervention  of  the  intelligence  of  man,  so  some 
anthropoid  form  may  have  been  evolved  by  variation 
and  natural  selection ;  but  it  could  never  have  given  rise 
to  man,  unless  some  superior  intelligence  had  played  the 
part  of  the  pigeon-fancier. 

According  to  Mr.  Wallace,  "  whether  we  compare  the 
savage  with  the  higher  developments  of  man,  or  with 
the  brutes  around  him,  we  are  alike  driven  to  the 
conclusion,  that,  in  his  large  and  well-developed  brain, 
he  possesses  an  organ  quite  disproportioned  to  his  re- 
quirements ".  (p.  343) ;  and  he  asks,  "What  is  there  in 
the  life  of  the  savage  .but  the  satisfying  of  the  cravings 
of  appetite  in  the  simplest  and  easiest  way  1  What 
thoughts,  idea,  or  actions  are  there  that  raise  him  many 
grades  above  the  elephant  or  the  ape  ? "  (p.  342).  I 
answer  Mr.  Wallace  by  citing  a  remarkable  passage 
which  occurs  in  his  instructive  paper  on  "  Instinct  in 
Man  and  Animals." 

1  "The  limits  of  Natural  Selection  as  applied  to  Man  "  (loc.  cit.  p.  359). 


260  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x. 

"  Savages  make  long  journeys  in  many  directions,  and,  their  whole 
faculties  being  directed  to  the  subject,  they  gain  a  wide  and  accurate 
knowledge  of  the  topography,  not  only  of  their  own  district,  but  of  all 
the  regions  round  about.  Everyone  who  has  travelled  in  a  new 
direction  communicates  his  knowledge  to  those  who  have  travelled 
less,  and  descriptions  of  routes  and  localities,  and  minute  incidents  of 
travel,  form  one  of  the  main  staples  of  conversation  around  the  evening 
fire.  Every  wanderer  or  captive  from  another  tribe  adds  to  the  store 
of  information,  and,  as  the  very  existence  of  individuals  and  of  whole 
families  and  tribes  depends  upon  the  completeness  of  this  knowledge, 
all  the  acute  perceptive  faculties  of  the  adult  savage  are  directed  to 
acquiring  and  perfecting  it.  The  good  hunter  or  warrior  thus  comes 
to  know  the  bearing  of  every  hill  and  mountain  range,  the  directions 
and  junctions  of  all  the  streams,  the  situation  of  each  tract  charac- 
terized by  peculiar  vegetation,  not  only  within  the  area  he  has  himself 
traversed,  but  perhaps  for  a  hundred  miles  around  it.  His  acute 
observation  enables  him  to  detect  the  slightest  undulations  of  the 
surface,  the  various  changes  of  subsoil  and  alterations  in  the  character 
of  the  vegetation  that  would  be  quite  imperceptible  to  a  stranger. 
His  eye  is  always  open  to  the  direction  in  which  he  is  going  ;  the  mossy 
side  of  trees,  the  presence  of  certain  plants  under  the  shade  of  rocks, 
the  morning  and  evening  flight  of  birds,  are  to  him  indications  of 
direction  almost  as  sure  as  the  sun  in  the  heavens  "  (pp.  207-8). 

I  have  seen  enough  of  savages  to  be  able  to  declare 
that  nothing  can  be  more  admirable  than  this  description 
of  what  a  savage  has  to  learn.  But  it  is  incomplete. 
Add  to  all  this  the  knowledge  which  a  savage  is  obliged 
to  gain  of  the  properties  of  plants,  of  the  characters  and 
habits  of  animals,  and  of  the  minute  indications  by 
which  their  course  is  discoverable  :  consider  that  even 
an  Australian  can  make  excellent  baskets  and  nets,  and 
neatly  fitted  and  beautifully  balanced  spears ;  that  he 
learns  to  use  these  so  as  to  be  able  to  transfix  a  quartern 
loaf  at  sixty  yards  .;  and  that  very  often,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  American  Indians,  the  language  of  a  savage 
exhibits  complexities  which  a  well-trained  European 
finds  it  difficult  to  master :  consider  that  every  time  a 
savage  tracks  his  game,  he  employs  a  minuteness  of 
observation,  and  an  accuracy  of  inductive  and  deductive 


x.]  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS.  261 

reasoning  which,  applied  to  other  matters,  would  assure 
some  reputation  to  a  man  of  science,  and  I  think  we 
need  ask  no  further  why  he  possesses  such  a  fair  supply 
of  brains.  In  complexity  and  difficulty,  I  should  say 
that  the  intellectual  labour  of  a  "good  hunter  or  warrior" 
considerably  exceeds  that  of  an  ordinary  Englishman. 
The  Civil  Service  Examiners  are  held  in  great  terror 
by  young  Englishmen  ;  but  even  their  ferocity  never 
tempted  them  to  require  a  candidate  to  possess  such  a 
knowledge  of  a  parish,  as  Mr.  Wallace  justly  points  out 
savages  may  possess  of  an  area  a  hundred  miles,  or  more, 
in  diameter. 

But  suppose,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  that  a  savage 
has  more  brains  than  seems  proportioned  to  his  wants, 
all  that  can  be  said  is  that  the  objection  to  natural  selec- 
tion, if  it  be  one,  applies  quite  as  strongly  to  the  lower 
animals.  The  brain  of  a  porpoise  is  quite  wonderful 
for  its  mass,  and  for  the  development  of  the  cerebral 
convolutions.  And  yet  since  we  have  ceased  to  credit 
the  story  of  Arion,  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  porpoises 
are  much  troubled  with  intellect :  and  still  more  difficult 
is  it  to  imagine  that  their  big  brains  are  only  a  prepara- 
tion for  the  advent  of  some  accomplished  cetacean  of  the 
future.  Surely,  again,  a  wolf  must  have  too  much  brains, 
or  else  how  is  it  that  a  dog,  with  only  the  same  quantity 
and  form  of  brain,  is  able  to  develop  such  singular  intelli- 
gence ?  The  wolf  stands  to  the  dog  in  the  same  relation 
as  the  savage  to  the  man;  and,  therefore,  if  Mr.  Wallace's 
doctrine  holds  good,  a  higher  power  must  have  super- 
intended the  breeding  up  of  wolves  from  some  inferior 
stock,  in  order  to  prepare  them  to  become  dogs. 

Mr.  Wallace  further  maintains  that  the  origin  of  some 
of  man's  mental  faculties  by  the  preservation  of  useful 
variations  is  not  possible.  Such,  for  example,  are  "  the 
capacity  to  form  ideal  conceptions  of  space  and  time,  of 


262  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x. 

eternity  and  infinity ;  the  capacity  for  intense  artistic 
feelings  of  pleasure  in  form,  colour,  and  composition  ; 
and  for  those  abstract  notions  of  form  and  number  which 
render  geometry  and  arithmetic  possible/'  "  How,"  he 
asks,  "were  all  or  any  of  these  faculties  first  developed, 
when  they  could  have  been  of  no  possible  use  to  man  in 
his  early  stages  of  barbarism  \  " 

Surely  the  answer  is  not  far  to  seek.  The  lowest 
savages  are  as  devoid  of  any  such  conceptions  as  the 
brutes  themselves.  What  sort  of  conceptions  of  space 
and  time,  of  form  and  number,  can  be  possessed  by  a 
savage  who  has  not  got  so  far  as  to  be  able  to  count 
beyond  five  or  six,  who  does  not  know  how  to  draw  a 
triangle  or  a  circle,  and  has  not  the  remotest  notion  of 
separating  the  particular  quality  we  call  form,  from  the 
other  qualities  of  bodies  1  None  of  these  capacities  are 
exhibited  by  men,  unless  they  form  part  of  a  tolerably 
advanced  society.  And,  in  such  a  society,  there  are 
abundant  conditions  by  which  a  selective  influence  is 
exerted  in  favour  of  those  persons  who  exhibit  an 
approximation  towards  the  possession  of  these  capacities. 

The  savage  who  can  amuse  his  fellows  by  telling  a 
good  story  over  the  nightly  fire,  is  held  by  them  in 
esteem  and  rewarded,  in  one  way  or  another,  for  so 
doing — in  other  words,  it  is  an  advantage  to  him  to 
possess  this  power.  He  who  can  carve  a  paddle,  or  the 
figure-head  of  a  canoe  better,  similarly  profits  beyond  his 
duller  neighbour.  He  who  counts  a  little  better  than 
others,  gets  most  yams  when  barter  is  going  on,  and 
forms  the  shrewdest  estimate  of  the  numbers  of  an 
opposing  tribe.  The  experience  of  daily  life  shows  that 
the  conditions  of  our  present  social  existence  exercise 
the  most  extraordinarily  powerful  selective  influence  in 
favour  of  novelists,  artists,  and  strong  intellects  of  all 
kinds  ;  and  it  seems  unquestionable  that  all  forms  of 


x.]  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS.  263 

social  existence  must  have  Lad  the  same  tendency,  if  we 
consider  the  indisputable  facts  that  even  animals  possess 
the  power  of  distinguishing  form  and  number,  and  that 
they  are  capable  of  deriving  pleasure  from  particular 
forms  and  sounds.  If  we  admit,  as  Mr.  Wallace  does, 
that  the  lowest  savages  are  not  raised  "  many  grades 
above  the  elephant  and  the  ape  ; "  and  if  we  further 
admit,  as  I  contend  must  be  admitted,  that  the  con- 
ditions of  social  life  tend,  powerfully,  to  give  an  advan- 
tage to  those  individuals  who  vary  in  the  direction 
of  intellectual  or  aesthetic  excellence,  what  is  there  to 
interfere  with  the  belief  that  these  higher  faculties,  like 
the  rest,  owe  their  development  to  natural  selection  ? 

Finally,  with  respect  to  the  development  of  the  moral 
sense  out  of  the  simple  feelings  of  pleasure  and  pain, 
liking  and  disliking,  with  which  the  lower  animals  are 
provided,  I  can  find  nothing  in  Mr.  Wallace's  reasonings 
which  has  not  already  been  met  by  Mr.  Mill,  Mr.  Spencer, 
or  Mr.  Darwin. 

I  do  not  propose  to  follow  the  Quarterly  Reviewer  and 
Mr.  Mivart  through  the  long  string  of  objections  in 
matters  of  detail  which  they  bring  against  Mr.  Darwin's 
views.  Everyone  who  has  considered  the  matter  care- 
fully will  be  able  to  ferret  out  as  many  more  "  diffi- 
culties ; "  but  he  will  also,  I  believe,  fail  as  completely  as 
they  appear  to  me  to  have  done,  in  bringing  forward  any 
fact  which  is  really  contradictory  of  Mr.  Darwin's  views. 
Occasionally,  too,  their  objections  and  criticisms  are 
based  upon  errors  of  their  own.  As,  for  example,  when 
Mr.  Mivart  and  the  Quarterly  Reviewer  insist  upon  the 
resemblances  between  the  eyes  of  Cephalopoda  and  Ver- 
tebrata,  quite  forgetting  that  there  are  striking  and  alto- 
gether fundamental  differences  between  them ;  or  when 
the  Quarterly  Reviewer  corrects  Mr.  Darwin  for  saying 


264:  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x, 

that  the  gibbons,  "without  having  been  taught,  can 
walk  or  run  upright  with  tolerable  quickness,  though 
they  move  awkwardly,  and  much  less  securely  than 
man."  The  Quarterly  Keviewer  says,  "  This  is  a 
little  misleading,  inasmuch  as  it  is  not  stated  that 
this  upright  progression  is  effected  by  placing  the 
enormously  long  arms  behind  the  head,  or  holding  them 
out  backwards  as  a  balance  in  progression/7 

Now,  before  carping  at  a  small  statement  like  this, 
the  Quarterly  Reviewer  should  have  made  sure  that  he 
was  quite  right.  But  he  happens  to  be  quite  wrong. 
I  suspect  he  got  his  notion  of  the  manner  in  which  a 
gibbon  walks  from  a  citation  in  "Man's  Place  in  Nature/' 
But  at  that  time  I  had  not  seen  a  gibbon  walk.  Since 
then  I  have,  and  I  can  testify  that  nothing  can  be  more 
precise  than  Mr.  Darwin's  statement.  The  gibbon  I  saw 
walked  without  either  putting  his  arms  behind  his  head 
or  holding  them  out  backwards.  All  he  did  was  to 
touch  the  ground  with  the  outstretched  fingers  of  his 
long  arms  now  and  then,  just  as  one  sees  a  man  who 
carries  a  stick,  but  does  not  need  one,  touch  the  ground 
with  it  as  he  walks  along. 

Again,  a  large  number  of  the  objections  brought  for- 
ward by  Mr.  Mivart  and  the  Quarterly  Reviewer  apply 
to  evolution  in  general,  quite  as  much  as  to  the  par- 
ticular form  of  that  doctrine  advocated  by  Mr.  Darwin  ; 
or,  to  their  notions  of  Mr.  Darwin's  views  and  not  to 
what  they  really  are.  An  excellent  example  of  this  class 
of  difficulties  is  to  be  found  in  Mr.  Mivart's  chapter  on 
"  Independent  Similarities  of  Structure."  Mr.  Mivart 
says  that  these  cannot  be  explained  by  an  "  absolute  and 
pure  Darwinian,"  but  "  that  an  innate  power  and  evolu- 
tionary law,  aided  by  the  corrective  action  of  natural 
selection,  should  have  furnished  like  needs  with  like  aids, 
is  not  at  all  improbable  "  (p.  82). 


x.]  MB.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS.  265 

I  do  not  exactly  know  what  Mr.  Mivart  means  by  an 
"  absolute  and  pure  Darwinian;"  indeed  Mr.  Mivart 
makes  that  creature  hold  so  many  singular  opinions 
that  I  doubt  if  I  can  ever  have  seen  one  alive.  But 
I  find  nothing  in  his  statement  of  the  view  which  he 
imagines  to  be  originated  by  himself,  which  is  really 
inconsistent  with  what  I  understand  to  be  Mr.  Darwin's 
views. 

I  apprehend  that  the  foundation  of  the  theory  of 
natural  selection  is  the  fact  that  living  bodies  tend 
incessantly  to  vary.  This  variation  is  neither  indefinite, 
nor  fortuitous,  nor  does  it  take  place  in  all  directions,  in 
the  strict  sense  of  these  words. 

Accurately  speaking,  it  is  not  indefinite,  nor  does  it 
take  place  in  all  directions,  because  it  is  limited  by  the 
general  characters  of  the  type  to  which  the  organism 
exhibiting  the  variation  belongs.  A  whale  does  not  tend 
to  vary  in  the  direction  of  producing  feathers,  nor  a  bird 
in  the  direction  of  developing  whalebone.  In  popular 
language  there  is  no  harm  in  saying  that  the  waves 
which  break  upon  the  sea-shore  are  indefinite,  fortuitous, 
and  break  in  all  directions.  In  scientific  language,  on 
the  contrary,  such  a  statement  would  be  a  gross  error, 
inasmuch  as  every  particle  of  foam  is  the  result  of  per- 
fectly definite  forces,  operating  according  to  no  less 
definite  laws.  In  like  manner,  every  variation  of  a 
living  form,  however  minute,  however  apparently  acci- 
dental, is  inconceivable  except  as  the  expression  of  the 
operation  of  molecular  forces  or  "  powers  "  resident 
within  the  organism.  And,  as  these  forces  certainly 
operate  according  to  definite  laws,  their  general  result 
is,  doubtless,  in  accordance  with  some  general  law  which 
subsumes  them  all.  And  there  appears  to  be  no  objec- 
tion to  call  this  an  "  evolutionary  law."  But  nobody  is 
the  wiser  for  doing  so,  or  has  thereby  contributed,  in  the 


266  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x. 

least  degree,  to  the  advance  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution, 
the  great  need  of  which  is  a  theory  of  variation. 

When  Mr.  Mivart  tells  us  that  his  "  aim  has  been  to 
support  the  doctrine  that  these  species  have  been  evolved 
by  ordinary  natural  laws  (for  the  most  part  unknown), 
aided  by  the  subordinate  action  of  '  natural  selection  ' ; 
(pp.  332-3),  he  seems  to  be  of  opinion  that  his  enterprise 
has  the  merit  of  novelty.  All  I  can  say  is  that  I  have 
never  had  the  slightest  notion  that  Mr.  Darwin's  aim  is 
in  any  way  different  from  this.  If  I  affirm  that  "  species 
have  been  evolved  by  variation  *  (a  natural  process,  the 
laws  of  which  are  for  the  most  part  unknown),  aided  by 
the  subordinate  action  of  natural  selection,"  it  seems  to 
me  that  I  enunciate  a  proposition  which  constitutes  the 
very  pith  and  marrow  of  the  first  edition  of  the  "  Origin 
of  Species. "  And  what  the  evolutionist  stands  in  need 
of  just  now,  is  not  an  iteration  of  the  fundamental  prin- 
ciple of  Darwinism,  but  some  light  upon  the  questions, 
What  are  the  limits  of  variation  ?  and,  If  a  variety  has 
arisen,  can  that  variety  be  perpetuated,  or  even  in- 
tensified, when  selective  conditions  are  indifferent,  or 
perhaps  unfavourable,  to  its  existence  ?  I  cannot  find 
that  Mr.  Darwin  has  ever  been  very  dogmatic  in  answer- 
ing these  questions.  Formerly,  he  seems  to  have  inclined 
to  reply  to  them  in  the  negative,  while  now  his  incli- 
nation is  the  other  way.  Leaving  aside  those  broad 
questions  of  theology,  philosophy,  and  ethics,  by  the 
discussion  of  which  neither  the  Quarterly  Eeviewer  nor 
Mr.  Mivart  can  be  said  to.  have  damaged  Darwinism — 
whatever  else  they  have  injured — this  is  what  their 
criticisms  come  to.  They  confound  a  struggle  for  some 
rifle-pits  with  an  assault  on  the  fortress. 

In  some  respects,  finally,  I  can  only  characterize  the 
Quarterly  Eeviewer's  treatment  of  Mr.  Darwin  as  alike 

1  Including  under  this  bead  hereditary  transmission. 


K.]  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS.  267 

unjust  and  unbecoming.  Language  of  this  strength 
requires  justification,  and  on  that  ground  I  add  the 
remarks  which  follow. 

The  Quarterly  Reviewer  opens  his  essay  by  a  careful 
enumeration  of  all  those  points  upon  which,  during  the 
course  of  thirteen  years  of  incessant  labour,  Mr.  Darwin 
has  modified  his  opinions.  It  has  often  and  justly  been 
remarked,  that  what  strikes  a  candid  student  of  Mr. 
Darwin's  works  is  not  so  much  his  industry,  his  know- 
ledge, or  even  the  surprising  fertility  of  his  inventive 
genius  ;  but  that  unswerving  truthfulness  and  honesty 
which  never  permit  him  to  hide  a  weak  place,  or  gloss 
over  a  difficulty,  but  lead  him,  on  all  occasions,  to  point 
out  the  weak  places  in  his  own  armour,  and  even  some- 
times, it  appears  to  me,  to  make  admissions  against 
himself  which  are  quite  unnecessary.  A  critic  who 
desires  to  attack  Mr.  Darwin  has  only  to  read  his  works 
with  a  desire  to  observe,  not  their  merits,  but  their 
defects,  and  he  will  find,  ready  to  hand,  more  adverse 
suggestions  than  are  likely  ever  to  have  suggested 
themselves  to  his  own  sharpness,  without  Mr.  Darwin's 
self-denying  aid. 

Now  this  quality  of  scientific  candour  is  not  so  com- 
mon that  it  needs  to  be  discouraged ;  and  it  appears  to 
me  to  deserve  other  treatment  than  that  adopted  by  the 
Quarterly  Reviewer,  who  deals  with  Mr.  Darwin  as  an 
Old  Bailey  barrister  deals  with  a  man  against  whom  he 
wishes  to  obtain  a  conviction,  per  fas  aut  nefas,  and 
opens  his  case  by  endeavouring  to  create  a  prejudice 
against  the  prisoner  in  the  minds  of  the  jury.  In  his 
eagerness  to  carry  out  this  laudable  design,  the  Quarterly 
Reviewer  cannot  even  state  the  history  of  the  doctrine 
of  natural  selection  without  an  oblique  and  entirely 
unjustifiable  attempt  to  depreciate  Mr.  Darwin.  "  To 
Mr.  Darwin,"  says  he,  "and  (through  Mr.  Wallace's 


268  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x. 

reticence)  to  Mr.  Darwin  alone,  is  due  the  credit  of 
having  first  brought  it  prominently  forward  and  demon- 
strated its  truth."  No  one  can  less  desire  than  I  do, 
to  throw  a  doubt  upon  Mr.  Wallace's  originality,  or  to 
question  his  claim  to  the  honour  of  being  one  of  the 
originators  of  the  doctrine  of  natural  selection ;  but  the 
statement  that  Mr.  Darwin  has  the  sole  credit  of  origi- 
nating the  doctrine  because  of  Mr.  Wallace's  reticence  is 
simply  ridiculous.  The  proof  of  this  is,  in  the  first 
place,  afforded  by  Mr.  Wallace  himself,  whose  noble 
freedom  from  petty  jealousy  in  this  matter,  smaller  folk 
would  do  well  to  imitate  ;  and  who  writes  thus  : — "  I 
have  felt  all  my  life,  and  I  still  feel,  the  most  sincere 
satisfaction  that  Mr.  Darwin  had  been  at  work  long 
before  me,  and  that  it  was  not  left  for  me  to  attempt 
to  write  the  'Origin  of  Species.'  I  have  long  since 
measured  my  own  strength,  and  know  well  that  it  would 
be  quite  unequal  to  that  task."  So  that  if  there  was 
any  reticence  at  all  in  the  matter,  it  was  Mr.  Darwin's 
reticence  during  the  long  twenty  years  of  study  which 
intervened  between  the  conception  and  the  publication 
of  his  theory,  which  gave  Mr.  Wallace  the  chance  of 
being  an  independent  discoverer  of  the  importance  of 
natural  selection.  And,  finally,  if  it  be  recollected  that 
Mr.  Darwin's  and  Mr.  Wallace's  essays  were  published 
simultaneously  in  the  Journal  of  the  Linncean  Society 
for  1858,  it  follows  that  the  Ee viewer,  while  obliquely 
depreciating  Mr.  Darwin's  deserts,  has  in  reality  awarded 
to  him  a  priority  which,  in  legal  strictness,  does  not 
exist. 

Mr.  Mivart,  whose  opinions  so  often  concur  with  those 
of  the  Quarterly  Eeviewer,  puts  the  case  in  a  way, 
which  I  much  regret  to  be  obliged  to  say,  is,  in  my 
judgment,  quite  as  incorrect ;  though  the  injustice  may 
be  less  glaring.  He  says  that  the  theory  of  natural 


x.]  MR.  DARWIN^  CRITICS.  269 

selection  is,  in  general,  exclusively  associated  with  the 
name  of  Mr.  Darwin,  "  on  account  of  the  noble  self- 
abnegation  of  Mr.  Wallace."  As  I  have  said,  no  one 
can  honour  Mr.  Wallace  more  than  I  do,  both  for  what 
he  has  done  and  for  what  he  has  not  done,  in  his  rela- 
tion to  Mr,  Darwin.  And  perhaps  nothing  is  more 
creditable  to  him  than  his  frank  declaration  that  he 
could  not  have  written  such  a  work  as  the  "  Origin  of 
Species."  But,  by  this  declaration,  the  person  most 
directly  interested  in  the  matter  repudiates,  by  antici- 
pation, Mr.  Mivart's  suggestion  that  Mr.  Darwin's  emi- 
nence is  more  or  less  due  to  Mr.  Wallace's  modesty. 


XL 
THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS.1 

CONSIDERING  that  Germany  now  takes  the  lead  of  the 
world  in  scientific  investigation,  and  particularly  in 
biology,  Mr.  Darwin  must  be  well  pleased  at  the  rapid 
spread  of  his  views  among  some  of  the  ablest  and  most 
laborious  of  German  naturalists. 

Among  these,  Professor  Haeckel,  of  Jena,  is  the  Cory- 
phaeus. I  know  of  no  more  solid  and  important  contri- 
butions to  biology  in  the  past  seven  years  than  Haeckel's 
work  on  the  JRadiolaria,  and  the  researches  of  his  dis- 
tinguished colleague  Gegenbaur,  in  vertebrate  anatomy ; 
while  in  Haeckel's  Generelle  Morphologic  there  is  all 
the  force,  suggestiveness,  and,  what  I  may  term  the 
systematizing  power,  of  Oken,  without  his  extravagance. 
The  Generelle  Morphologie  is,  in  fact,  an  attempt  to  put 
the  doctrine  of  Evolution,  so  far  as  it  applies  to  the 
living  world,  into  a  logical  form ;  and  to  work  out  its 
practical  applications  to  their  final  results.  The  work 
before  us,  again,  may  be  said  to  be  an  exposition  of  the 
Generelle  Morphologie  for  an  educated  public,  consist- 
ing, as  it  does,  of  the  substance  of  a  series  of  lectures 

1  "  The  Natural  History  of  Creation."  By  Dr.  Ernst  Haeckel.  [Natur- 
liche  Schopfungs-Geschichte. — Von  Dr.  Ernst  Haeckel,  Professor  an  der 
Universitat  Jena.]  Berlin,  1868. 


xi.]         THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS.         271 

delivered  before  a  mixed  audience  at  Jena,  in  the  session 
1867-8. 

"  The  Natural  History  of  Creation," — or,  as  Professor 
Haeckel  admits  it  would  have  been  better  to  call  his 
work,  "  The  History  of  the  Development  or  Evolution  of 
Nature," — deals,  in  the  first  six  lectures,  with  the  general 
and  historical  aspects  of  the  question,  and  contains  a 
very  interesting  and  lucid  account  of  the  views  of  Lin- 
naeus, Cuvier,  Agassiz,  Goethe,  Oken,  Kant,  Lamarck, 
Lyell,  and  Darwin,  and  of  the  historical  filiation  of  these 
philosophers. 

The  next  six  lectures  are  occupied  by  a  well -digested 
statement  of  Mr.  Darwin's  views.  The  thirteenth  lecture 
discusses  two  topics  which  are  not  touched  by  Mr.  Darwin, 
namely,  the  origin  of  the  present  form  of  the  solar  system, 
and  that  of  living  matter.  Full  justice  is  done  to  Kant, 
as  the  originator  of  that  "cosmic  gas  theory,"  as  the 
Germans  somewhat  quaintly  call  it,  which  is  commonly 
ascribed  to  Laplace.  With  respect  to  spontaneous  gene- 
ration, while  admitting  that  there  is  no  experimental 
evidence  in  its  favour,  Professor  Haeckel  denies  the 
possibility  of  disproving  it,  and  points  out  that  the 
assumption  that  it  has  occurred  is  a  necessary  part  of 
the  doctrine  of  Evolution.  The  fourteenth  lecture, 
on  "  Schopfungs-Perioden  und  Schopfungs-Urkunden," 
answers  pretty  much  to  the  famous  disquisition  on 
the  "  Imperfection  of  the  Geological  Eecord "  in  the 
Origin  of  Species. 

The  following  five  lectures  contain  the  most  original 
matter  of  any,  being  devoted  to  "  Phylogeny,"  or  the 
working  out  of  the  details  of  the  process  of  Evolution 
in  the  ^animal  and  vegetable  kingdoms,  so  as  to  prove 
the  line  of  descent  of  each  group  of  living  beings, 
and  to  furnish  it  with  its  proper  genealogical  tree,  or 
"phylum." 


272  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [n. 

The  last  lecture  considers  objections  and  sums  up  the 
evidence  in  favour  of  biological  Evolution. 

I  shall  best  testify  to  my  sense  of  the  value  of  the 
work  thus  briefly  analysed  if  I  now  proceed  to  note 
down  some  of  the  more  important  criticisms  which  have 
been  suggested  to  me  by  its  perusal. 

I.  In  more  than  one  place,  Professor  Haeckel  enlarges 
upon  the  service  which  the  Origin  of  Species  has  done, 
in  favouring  what  he  terms  the  "  causal  or  mechanical " 
view  of  living  nature  as  opposed  to  the  "  teleological  or 
vitalistic  "  view.  And  no  doubt  it  is  quite  true  that  the 
doctrine  of  Evolution  is  the  most  formidable  opponent  of 
all  the  commoner  and  coarser  forms  of  Teleology.  But 
perhaps  the  most  remarkable  service  to  the  philosophy 
of  Biology  rendered  by  Mr.  Darwin  is  the  reconciliation 
of  Teleology  and  Morphology,  and  the  explanation  of  the 
facts  of  both  which  his  views  offer. 

The  Teleology  which  supposes  that  the  eye,  such  as  we 
see  it  in  man  or  one  of  the  higher  Vertebrata,  was  made 
with  the  precise  structure  which  it  exhibits,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  enabling  the  animal  which  possesses  it  to  see, 
has  undoubtedly  received  its  death-blow.  Nevertheless 
it  is  necessary  to  remember  that  there  is  a  wider  Tele- 
ology, which  is  not  touched  by  the  doctrine  of  Evolution, 
but  is  actually  based  upon  the  fundamental  proposition 
of  Evolution.  That  proposition  is,  that  the  whole  world, 
living  and  not  living,  is  the  result  of  the  mutual  inter- 
action, according  to  definite  laws,  of  the  forces  possessed 
by  the  molecules  of  which  the  primitive  nebulosity 
of  the  universe  was  composed.  If  this  be  true,  it  is 
no  less  certain  that  the  existing  world  lay,  potentially, 
in  the  cosmic  vapour ;  and  that  a  sufficient  intelligence 
could,  from  a  knowledge  of  the  properties  of  the  mole- 
cules of  that  vapour,  have  predicted,  say  the  state  of  the 
Fauna  of  Britain  in  1869,  with  as  much  certainty  as  one 


XL]  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS.  273 

can  say  what  will  happen  to  the  vapour  of  the  breath  in 
a  cold  winter's  day.. 

Consider  a  kitchen  clock,  which  ticks  loudly,  shows 
the  hours,  minutes,  and. seconds,  strikes,  cries  "  cuckoo  !  " 
and  perhaps  shows  the  phases  of  the  moon.  When  the 
clock  is  wound  up,  all  the  phenomena  which  it  exhibits 
are  potentially  contained  in  its  mechanism,  and  a  clever 
clockmaker  could  predict  all  it  will  do  after  an  exami- 
nation of  its  structure. 

If  the  evolution  theory  is  correct,  the  molecular 
structure  of  the  cosmic  gas  stands  in  the  same  relation 
to  the  phenomena  of  the  world  as  the  structure  of  the 
clock  to  its  phenomena. 

Now  let  us  suppose  a  death-watch,  living  in  the  clock- 
case,  to  be  a  learned  and  intelligent  student  of  its  works. 
He  might  say,  "  I  find  here  nothing  but  matter  and  force 
and  pure  mechanism  from  beginning  to  end,"  and  he 
would  be  quite  right.  But  if  he  drew  the  conclusion 
that  the  clock  was  not  contrived  for  a  purpose,  he  would 
be  quite  wrong.  On  the  other  hand,  imagine  another 
death-watch  of  a  different  turn  of  mind.  He,  listening 
to  the  monotonous  "  tick  !  tick ! "  so  exactly  like  his 
own,  might  arrive  at  the  conclusion  that  the  clock 
was  itself  a  monstrous  sort  of  death-watch,  and  that 
its  final  cause  and  purpose  was  to  tick.  How  easy 
to  point  to  the  clear  relation  of  the  whole  mechanism 
to  the  pendulum,  to  the  fact  that  the  one  thing  the 
clock  did  always  and  without  intermission  was  to  tick, 
and  that  all  the  rest  of  its  phenomena  were  intermittent 
and  subordinate  to  ticking !  For  all  this,  it  is  certain 
that  kitchen  clocks  are  not  contrived  for  the  purpose  of 
making  a  ticking  noise. 

Thus  the  teleological  theorist  would  be  as  wrong  as 
the  mechanical  theorist,  among  our  death-watches ;  and, 
probably,  the  only  death-watch  who  would  be  right 


274  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [xi 

would  be  the  one  who  should  maintain  that  the  sole 
thing  death-watches  could  be  sure  about  was  the  nature 
of  the  clock-works  and  the  way  they  move ;  and  that 
the  purpose  of  the  clock  lay  wholly  beyond  the  purview 
of  beetle  faculties. 

Substitute  "  cosmic  vapour  "  for  "  clock,"  and  "  mole- 
cules "  for  "  works,"  and  the  application  of  the  argument 
is  obvious.  The  teleological  and  the  mechanical  views 
of  nature  are  not,  necessarily,  mutually  exclusive.  On 
the  contrary,  the  more  purely  a  mechanist  the  speculator 
is,  the  more  firmly  does  he  assume  a  primordial  mole- 
cular arrangement,  of  which  all  the  phenomena  of  the 
universe  are  the  consequences  ;  and  the  more  completely 
is  he  thereby  at  the  mercy  of  the  teleologist,  who  can 
always  defy  him  to  disprove  that  this  primordial  mole- 
cular arrangement  was  not  intended  to  evolve  the  phe- 
nomena of  the  universe.  On  the  other  hand,  if  the 
teleologist  assert  that  this,  that,  or  the  other  result  of 
the  working  of  any  part  of  the  mechanism  of  the 
universe  is  its  purpose  and  final  cause,  the  mechanist 
can  always  inquire  how  he  knows  that  it  is  more  than 
an  unessential  incident — the  mere  ticking  of  the  clock, 
which  he  mistakes  for  its  function.  And  there  seems  to 
be  no  reply  to  this  inquiry,  any  more  than  to  the  fur- 
ther, not  irrational,  question,  why  trouble  oneself  about 
matters  which  are  out  of  reach,  when  the  working  of 
the  mechanism  itself,  which  is  of  infinite  practical 
importance,  affords  scope  for  all  our  energies  \ 

Professor  Haeckel  has  invented  a  new  and  convenient 
name,  "  Dysteleology,"  for  the  study  of  the  "  purpose- 
lessnesses"  which  are  observable  in  living  organisms — 
such  as  the  multitudinous  cases  of  rudimentary  and 
apparently  useless  structures.  I  confess,  however,  that 
it  has  often  appeared  to  me  that  the  facts  of  Dysteleo- 
logy cut  two  ways.  If  we  are  to  assume,  as  evolutionists 


xi.]        THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS.       .  275 

in  general  do,  that  useless  organs  atrophy,  such  cases  as 
the  existence  of  lateral  rudiments  of  toes,  in  the  foot  of 
a  horse,  place  us  in  a  dilemma.  For,  either  these  rudi- 
ments are  of  no  use  to  the  animal,  in  which  case,  con- 
sidering that  the  horse  has  existed  in  its  present  form 
since  the  Pliocene  epoch,  they  surely  ought  to  have 
disappeared ;  or  they  are  of  some  use  to  the  animal,  in 
which  case  they  are  of  no  use  as  arguments  against 
Teleology.  A  similar,  but  still  stronger,  argument 
may  be  based  upon  the  existence  of  teats,  and  even 
functional  mammary  glands,  in  male  mammals.  Nume- 
rous cases  of  "  Gynsecomasty,"  or  functionally  active 
breasts  in  men,  are  on  record,  though  there  is  no  mam- 
malian species  whatever  in  which  the  male  normally 
suckles  the  young.  Thus,  there  can  be  little  doubt 
that  the  mammary  gland  was  as  apparently  useless  in 
the  remotest  male  mammalian  ancestor  of  man  as  in 
living  men,  and  yet  it  has  not  disappeared.  Is  it  then 
still  profitable  to  the  male  organism  to  retain  it  \  Pos- 
sibly ;  but  in  that  case  its  dysteleological  value  is  gone. 

II.  Professor  Haeckel  looks  upon  the  causes  which 
have  led  to  the  present  diversity  of  living  nature  as 
twofold.  Living  matter,  he  tells  us,  is  urged  by  two 
impulses :  a  centripetal,  which  tends  to  preserve  and 
transmit  the  specific  form,  and  which  he  identifies  with 
heredity;  and  a  centrifugal,  which  results  from  the 
tendency  of  external  conditions  to  modify  the -organism 
and  effect  its  adaptation  to  themselves.  The  internal 
impulse  is  conservative,  and  tends  to  the  preservation 
of  specific,  or  individual,  form ;  the  external  impulse  is 
metamorphic,  and  tends  to  the  modification  of  specific, 
or  individual,  form. 

In  developing  his  views  _upon  this  subject,  Professor 
Haeckel  introduces  qualifications  which  disarm  some  of 
the  criticisms  I  should  have  been  disposed  to  offer ;  but 

13 


276  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [xi. 

I  think  that  his  method  of  stating  the  case  has  the  in- 
convenience of  tending  to  leave  out  of  sight  the  impor- 
tant fact — which  is  a  cardinal  point  in  the  Darwinian 
hypothesis  —  that  the  tendency  to  vary,  in  a  given 
organism,  may  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  external 
conditions  to  which  that  individual  organism  is  exposed, 
but  may  depend  wholly  upon  internal  conditions.  No 
one,  I  imagine,  would  dream  of  seeking  in  the  direct 
influence  of  the  external  conditions  of  his  life  for  the 
cause  of  the  development  of  the  sixth  finger  and  toe 
in  the  famous  Maltese. 

I  conceive  that  both  hereditary  transmission  and  adap- 
tation need  to  be  analysed  into  their  constituent  condi- 
tions by  the  further  application  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
Struggle  for  Existence.  It  is  a  probable  hypothesis,  that 
what  the  world  is  to  organisms  in  general,  each  organism 
is  to  the-  molecules  of  which  it  is  composed.  Multitudes 
of  these,  having  diverse  tendencies,  are  competing  with 
one  another  for  opportunity  to  exist  and  multiply ;  and 
the  organism,  as  a  whole,  is  as  much  the  product  of  the 
molecules  which  are  victorious  as  the  Fauna,  or  Flora, 
of  a  country  is  the  product  of  the  victorious  organic 
beings  in  it. 

On  this  hypothesis,  hereditary  transmission  is  the 
result  of  the  victory  of  particular  molecules  contained  in 
the  impregnated  germ.  Adaptation  to  conditions  is  the 
result  of  the  favouring  of  the  multiplication  of  those 
molecules  whose  organizing  tendencies  are  most  in  har- 
mony with  such  conditions.  In  this  view  of  the  matter, 
conditions  are  not  actively  productive,  but  are  passively 
permissive  ;  they  do  not  cause  variation  in  any  given 
direction,  but  they  permit  and  favour  a  tendency  in  that 
direction  which  already  exists. 

It  is  true  that,  in  the  long  run,  the  origin  of  the 
organic  molecules  themselves,  and  of  their  tendencies,  is 


XL]  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS.  277 

to  be  sought  in  the  external  world ;  but  if  we  carry  our 
inquiries  as  far  back  as  this,  the  distinction  between 
internal  and  external  impulses  vanishes.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  we  confine  ourselves  to  the  consideration  of  a 
single  organism,  I  think  it  must  be  admitted  that  the 
existence  of  an  internal  metamorphic  tendency  must  be 
as  distinctly  recognized  as  that  of  an  internal  conservative 
tendency ;  and  that  the  influence  of  conditions  is  mainly, 
if  not  wholly,  the  result  of  the  extent  to  which  they 
favour  the  one,  or  the  other,  of  these  tendencies. 

III.  There  is  only  one  point  upon  which  I  funda- 
mentally and  entirely  disagree  with  Professor  Haeckel, 
but  that  is  the  very  important  one  of  his  conception  of 
geological  time,  and  of  the  meaning  of  the  stratified 
rocks  as  records  and  indications  of  that  time.  Con- 
ceiving that  the  stratified  rocks  of  an  epoch  indicate  a 
period  of  depression,  and  that  the  intervals  between 
the  epochs  correspond  with  periods  of  elevation  of  which 
we  have  no  record,  he  intercalates  between  the  different 
epochs,  or  periods,  intervals  which  he  terms  "Ante- 
periods/'  Thus,  instead  of  considering  the  Triassic, 
Jurassic,  Cretaceous,  and  Eocene  periods,  as  continuously 
successive,  he  interposes  a  period  before  each,  as  an 
"Antetrias-zeit,"  "  Antejura-zeit,"  "Antecreta-zeit,"  "Ant- 
eocen-zeit,"  &c.  And  he  conceives  that  the  abrupt 
changes  between  the  Faunae  of  the  different  formations 
are  due  to  the  lapse  of  time,  of  which  we  have  no 
organic  record,  during  their  "  Ante-periods." 

The  frequent  occurrence  of  strata  containing  assem- 
blages of  organic  forms  which  are  intermediate  between 
those  of  adjacent  formations,  is,  to  my  mind,  fatal  to 
this  view.  In  the  well-known  St.  Cassian  beds,  for 
example,  Palaeozoic  and  Mesozoic  forms  are  commingled, 
and,  between  the  Cretaceous  and  the  Eocene  formations, 
there  are  similar  transitional  beds.  On  the  other  hand, 


278  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [xi. 

in  the  middle  of  the  Silurian  series,  extensive  uncon- 
formity of  the  strata  indicates  the  lapse  of  vast  intervals 
of  time  between  the  deposit  of  successive  beds,  without 
any  corresponding  change  in  the  Fauna. 

Professor  Haeckel  will,  I  fear,  think  me  unreasonable, 
if  I  say  that  he  seems  to  be  still  overshadowed  by  geo- 
logical superstitions  ;  and  that  he  will  have  to  believe 
in  the  completeness  of  the  geological  record  far  less  than 
he  does  at  present.  He  assumes,  for  example,  that  there 
was  no  dry  land,  nor  any  terrestrial  life,  before  the  end 
of  the  Silurian  epoch,  simply  because,  up  to  the 
present  time,  no  indications  of  fresh  water,  or  terrestrial 
organisms,  have  been  found  in  rocks  of  older  date. 
And,  in  speculating  upon  the  origin  of  a  given  group, 
he  rarely  goes  further  back  than  the  "Ante-period," 
which  precedes  that  in  which  the  remains  of  animals 
belonging  to  that  group  are  found.  Thus,  as  fossil 
remains  of  the  majority  of  the  groups  of  Reptilia  are 
first  found  in  the  Trias,  they  are  assumed  to  have 
originated  in  the  "  Antetriassic  "  period,  or  between  the 
Permian  and  Triassic  epochs. 

I  confess  this  is  wholly  incredible  to  me.  The  Per- 
mian and  the  Triassic  deposits  pass  completely  into  one 
another ;  there  is  no  sort  of  discontinuity  answering  to 
an  unrecorded  "  Antetrias ; "  and,  what  is  more,  we  have 
evidence  of  immensely  extensive  dry  land  during  the 
formation  of  these  deposits.  We  know  that  the  dry  land 
of  the  Trias  absolutely  teemed  with  reptiles  of  all  groups 
except  Pterodactyles,  Snakes,  and  perhaps  Tortoises ; 
there  is  every  probability  that  true  Birds  existed,  and 
Mammalia  certainly  did.  Of  the  inhabitants  of  the 
Permian  dry  land,  on  the  contrary,  all  that  have  left  a 
record  are  a  few  lizards.  Is  it  conceivable  that  these  last 
should  really  represent  the  whole  terrestrial  population 
of  that  time,  and  that  the  development  of  Mammals,  of 


XL]  THE  GENE  A  LOGY  OF  ANIMALS.  279 

Birds,  and  of  the  highest  forms  of  Reptiles,  should  have 
been  crowded  into  the  time  during  which  the  Permian 
conditions  quietly  passed  away,  and  the  Triassic  condi- 
tions began  ?  Does  not  any  such  supposition  become  in 
the  highest  degree  improbable,  when,  in  the  terrestrial  or 
fresh-water  Labyriuthodonts,  which  lived  on  the  land  of 
the  Carboniferous  epoch,  as  well  as  on  that  of  the  Trias, 
we  have,  evidence  that  one  form  of  terrestrial  life  per- 
sisted, throughout  all  these  ages,  with  no  important  modi- 
fication ?  For  my  part,  having  regard  to  the  small  amount 
of  modification  (except  in  the  way  of  extinction)  which 
the  Crocodilian,  Lacertilian,  and  Chelonian  Reptilia 
have  undergone,  from  the  older  Mesozoic  times  to  the 
present  day,  I  cannot  but  put  the  existence  of  the 
common  stock  from  which  they  sprang  far  back  in  the 
Palaeozoic  epoch  ;  and  I  should  apply  a  similar  argu- 
mentation to  all  other  groups  of  animals. 

IV.  Professor  Haeckel  proposes  a  number  of  modifica- 
tions in  Taxonomy,  all  of  which  are  well  worthy  of  con- 
sideration. Thus  he  establishes  a  third  primary  division 
of  the  living  world,  distinct  from  both  animals  and 
plants,  under  the  name  of  the  Protista,  to  include  the 
Myxomycetes,  the  Diatomacece,  and  the  Labyrinihulce, 
which  are  commonly  regarded  as  plants,  with  the  Noc- 
tiluccBy  the  Flagellata,  the  Rhizopoda,  the  Protoplasta, 
and  the  Monera,  which  are  most  generally  included 
within  the  animal  world.  A  like  attempt  has  been 
made,  by  other  writers,  to  escape  the  inconvenience  of 
calling  these  dubious  organisms  by  the  name  of  plant  or 
animal ;  but  I  confess,  it  appears  to  me,  that  the  incon- 
venience which  is  eluded  in  one  direction,  by  this  step, 
is  met  in  two  others.  Professor  Haeckel  himself  doubts 
whether  the  Fungi  ought  not  to  be  removed  into  his 
Protista.  If  they  are  not,  indeed,  the  Myxomycetes 
render  the  drawing  of  every  line  of  demarcation  between 


280  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [xi. 

Protista  and  Plants  impossible.  But  if  they  are,  who  is 
to  define  the  Fungi  from  the  Alga  ?  Yet  the  seaweeds 
are  surely,  in  every  respect,  plants.  On  the  other  hand, 
Professor  Haeckel  puts  the  sponges  among  the  Ccelente- 
rata  (or  polypes  and  corals),  with  the  double  inconve- 
nience, as  it  appears  to  me,  of  separating  the  sponges 
from  their  immediate  kindred,  the  Protoplasta,  and  de- 
stroying the  definition  of  the  Ccdenterata.  So  again, 
the  Infusoria  possess  all  the  characters  of  animality, 
but  it  can  hardly  be  said  that  they  are  as  clearly  allied 
to  the  worms  as  they  are  to  the  Noctilucce. 

On  the  whole,  it  appears  to  me  to  be  most  conve- 
nient to  adhere  to  the  old  plan  of  calling  such  of  these 
low  forms  as  are  more  animal  in  habit,  Protozoa,  and 
such  as  are  more  vegetal,  Protophyta. 

Another  considerable  innovation  is  the  proposition 
to  divide  the  class  Pisces  into  the  four  groups  of  Lep- 
tocardia,  Cyclostomata,  Pisces,  and  Dipneusta.  As 
regards  the  establishment  of  a  separate  class  for  the 
Lancelet  (Amphioxus),  I  think  there  can  be  little  doubt 
of  the  propriety  of  so  doing,  inasmuch  as  it  is  far  more 
different  from  all  other  fishes  than  they  are  from  one 
another.  And  there  is  much  to  be  said  in  favour  of 
the  same  promotion  of  the  Cyclostomata,  or  Lampreys 
and  Hags.  But  considering  the  close  relation  of  the 
Mudfish  with  the  Ganoidei,  and  the  wide  differences 
between  the  Elasmobranchii  and  the  Teleostei,  I 
greatly  doubt  the  propriety  of  separating  the.  Dip- 
neusta, as  a  class,  from  the  other  Pisces. 

Professor  Haeckel  proposes  to  break  up  the  vertebrate 
sub-kingdom,  first,  into  the  two  provinces  of  Leptocardia 
and  Pacliycardia  ;  Amphioxus  being  in  the  former, 
and  all  other  vertebrates  in  the  latter  division.  The 
Pacliycardia  are  then  divided  into  Monorhina,  which 
contains  the  Cyclostome  fishes,  distinguished  by  their 


XL]  TEE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS.  281 

single  nasal  aperture  ;  and  Amphirhina,  comprising  the 
other  Vertebrata,  which  have  two  nasal  apertures.  These 
are  further  subdivided  into  Anamnia  (Pisces,  Dipneusta, 
Amphibia)  and  Amniota  (Reptilia,  Aves,  Mammalia). 
This  classification  undoubtedly  expresses  many  of  the 
most  important  facts  in  vertebrate  structure  in  a  clear 
and  compendious  way;  whether  it  is  the  best  that  can 
be  adopted  remains  to  be  seen. 

With  much  reason  the  Lemurs  are  removed  altogether 
from  the  Primates,  under  the  name  of  Prosimice.  But 
I  am  surprised  to  find  the  Sirenia  left  in  one  group 
with  the  Getacea,  and  the  Plesiosauria  with  the  Ichthyo- 
sauria ;  the  ordinal  distinctness  of  these  having,  to  my 
mind,  been  long  since  fully  established. 

V.  In  Professor  Haeckel's  speculations  on  Phylogeny, 
or  the  genealogy  of  animal  forms,  there  is  much  that  is 
profoundly  interesting,  and  his  suggestions  are  always 
supported  by  sound  knowledge  and  great  ingenuity. 
Whether  one  agrees  or  disagrees  with  him,  one  feels  that 
he  has  forced  the  mind  into  lines  of  thought  in  which  it 
is^more  profitable  to  go  wrong  than  to  stand  still. 

To  put  his  views  into  a  few  words,  he  conceives  that 
all  forms  of  life  originally  commenced  as  Monera,  or 
simple  particles  of  protoplasm ;  and  that  these  Monera 
originated  from  not-living  matter.  Some  of  the  Monera 
acquired  tendencies  towards  the  Protistic,  others  towards 
the  Vegetal,  and  others  towards  the  Animal  modes  of 
life.  The  last  became  animal  Monera.  Some  of  the 
animal  Monera  acquired  a  nucleus,  and  became  amoeba- 
like  creatures ;  and,  out  of  certain  of  these,  ciliated 
infusorium-like  animals  were  developed.  These  became 
modified  into  two  stirpes :  A,  that  of  the  worms ;  and 
B,  that  of  the  sponges.  The  latter  by  progressive  modi- 
fication gave  rise  to  all  the  Ccelenterata ;  the  former 
to  all  other  animals.  But  A  soon  broke  up  into  two 


282  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [xi. 

principal  stirpes,  of  which  one,  a,  became  the  root  of  the 
Annelida,  Echinodermata,  and  Arthropoda,  while  the 
other,  6,  gave  rise  to  the  Polyzoa  and  Ascidioida,  and 
produced  the  two  remaining  stirpes  of  the  Vertebrata 
and  the  Mollusca.  ' 

Perhaps  the  most  startling  proposition  of  all  those 
which  Professor  Haeckel  puts  before  us  is  that  which 
he  bases  upon  Kowalewsky's  researches  into  the  deve- 
lopment of  Ampliioxus  and  of  the  Ascidioida,  that  the 
origin  of  the  Vertebrata  is  to  be  sought  in  an  Ascidioid 
form.  Goodsir  long  ago  insisted  upon  the  resemblance 
between  Amphioxus  and  the  Ascidians ;  but  the  notion 
of  a  genetic  connection  between  the  two,  and  especially 
the  identification  of  the  notochord  of  the  Vertebrate 
with  the  axis  of  the  caudal  appendage  of  the  larva  of 
the  Ascidian,  is  a  novelty  which,  at  first,  takes  one's 
breath  away.  I  must  confess,  however,  that  the  more 
I  have  pondered  over  it,  the  more  grounds  appear  in 
its  favour,  though  I  am  not  convinced  that  there  is  any 
real  parallelism  between  the  mode  of  development  of 
the  ganglion  of  the  Ascidian  and  that  of  the  Vertebrate 
cerebro-spinal  axis. 

The  hardly  less  startling  hypothesis  that  the  Echino- 
derms  are  coalesced  worms,  on  the  other  hand,  appears 
to  be  open  to  serious  objection.  As  a  matter  of  anatomy, 
it  does  not  seem  to  me  to  correspond  with  fact ;  for  there 
is  no  worm  with  a  calcareous  skeleton,  nor  any  which 
has  a  band-like  ventral  nerve,  superficial  to  which  lies 
an  ambulacral  vessel.  And,  as  a  question  of  develop- 
ment, the  formation  of  the  radiate  Echinoderm  within 
its  vermiform  larva  seems  to  me  to  be  analogous  to  the 
formation  of  a  radiate  Medusa  upon  a  Hydrozoic  stock. 
But  a  Medusa  is  surely  not  the  result  of  the  coalescence 
of  as  many  organisms  as  it  presents  morphological 
segments. 


XT.]  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS.  283 

Professor  Haeckel  adduces  the  fossil  Crossopodia  and 
Phyllodocites  as  examples  of  the  Annelidan  forms,  by 
the  coalescence  of  which  the  Echinoderms  may  have 
been  produced  ;  but,  even  supposing  the  resemblance 
of  these  worms  to  detached  starfish  arms  to  be  perfect, 
it  is  possible  that  they  may  be  the  extreme  term,  and 
not  the  commencement,  of  Echinoderm  development. 
A  pentacrinoid  Echinoderm,  with  a  complete  jointed 
stalk,  is  developed  within  the  larva  of  Antedon.  Is 
it  not  possible  that  the  larva  of  Crossopodia  may 
have  developed  a  vermiform  Echinoderm  ? 

With  respect  to  the  Phylogeny  of  the  Arthropoda,  I 
find  myself  disposed  to  take  a  somewhat  different  view 
from  that  of  Professor  Haeckel.  He  assumes  that  the 
primary  stock  of  the  whole  group  was  a  crustacean, 
having  that  Naupiius-form  in  which  Fritz  Miiller  has 
shown  that  so  many  Crustacea  commence  their  lives. 
All  the  Entomostraca  arose  by  the  modification  of  some 
one  or  other  of  these  Naupliform  "  Archicarida." 
Other  Archicarida  underwent  a  further  metamorphosis 
into  a  Zocea-form.  From  some  of  these  "  Zoeopoda " 
arose  all  the  remaining  Malacostracous  Crustacea; 
while,  from  others,  was  developed  some  form  analogous 
to  the  existing  Galeodes,  out  of  which  proceeded,  by 
gradual  differentiation,  all  the  Myriapoda,  Arachnida, 
and  Insect  a. 

I  should  be  disposed  to  interpret  the  facts  of  the 
embryological  history  and  of  the  anatomy  of  the  Arthro- 
poda  in  a  different  manner.  The  Copepoda,  the  Ostra- 
coda,  and  the  Branchiopoda  are  the  Crustacea  which 
have  departed  least  from  the  embryonic  or  Nauplius- 
forms ;  and,  of  these,  I  imagine  that  the  Copepoda 
represent  the  hypothetical  Archicarida  most  closely. 
Apus  and  Sapphirina  indicate  the  relations  of  these 
Archseocarids  with  the  Trilobita,  and  the  Eurypterida 


284  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [xi. 

connect   the    Trilobita    and    the    Copepoda    with   the 
Xiphosura.     But  the  XipJiosura  have  such   close  mor- 
phological relations  with  the  Arachnida,  and  especially 
with  the  oldest  known  Arachnidan,  Scorpio,  that  I  can- 
not doubt  the  existence  of  a  genetic  connection  between 
the  two  groups.     On  the  other  hand,  the  Branchiopoda 
do,  even  at  the  present  day,  almost  pass  into  the  true 
Podophihalmia,  by  Nebalia.      By'  the  Trilobita,  again, 
the  Archicarida  are  connected  with  such  Edrioplithal- 
mia  as  Serolis.     The  Stomapoda  are  extremely  modified 
Edriophthalmia  of  the  amphipod  type.    On  the  other 
side,  the  Isopoda  lead  to  the  Myriapoda,  and  the  latter 
to   the   Insecta.     Thus  the  Arthropod   phylum,   which 
suggests    itself  to    me,   is   that   the   branches   of    the 
Podophthalmia,  of  the  Insecta  (with  the  Myriapoda), 
and  of  the  Arachnida,  spring  separately  and  distinctly 
from  the  Archseocarid  root — and  that  the  Zocea-foims 
occur  only  at  the  origin  of  the  Podophthalmous  branch. 
The  phylum  of  the  Vertebrata  is  the  most  interesting 
of  all,  and  is  admirably  discussed  by  Professor  Haeckel. 
I  can  note  only  a  few  points  which  seem  to  me  to  be 
open   to    discussion.       The   Monorhina,   having    been 
developed  out  of  the  Leptocardia,  gave  rise,  according 
to  Professor  Haeckel,  to  a  shark-like  form,  which  was 
the  common  stock  of  all  the  Amphirliina.     From  this 
"  Protamphirhine  "  were  developed,  in  divergent  lines, 
the  true  Sharks,  Rays,  and  Chimcerce ;  the  Ganoids,  and 
the  Dipneusta.     The  Teleostei  are  modified  Ganoidei. 
The  Dipneusta  gave  rise  to  the  Amphibia,  which  are 
the  root  of  all  other  Vertebrata^  inasmuch  as  out  of  them 
were  developed  the  first  Vertetoata  provided  with  an 
amnion,   or  the  Protamniota.     The   Protamniota  split 
up  into  two  stems,  one  that  of  the  Mammalia,   the 
other  common  to  Reptilia  and  Aves. 

The  only  modification  which  it  occurs  tome  to  suggest 


XL]  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS.  285 

iii  this  general  view  of  the  Phylogeny  of  the  Vertebrata 
is,  that  the  "  Protamphirhine"  was  possibly  more  ganoid 
than  shark-like.  So  far  as  our  present  information  goes 
the  Ganoids  are  as  old  as  the  Sharks ;  and  it  is  very 
interesting  to  observe  that  the  remains  of  the  oldest 
Ganoids,  Cephalaspis  and  Pteraspis,  have  as  yet  displayed 
no  trace  of  jaws.  It  is  just  possible  that  they  may 
connect  the  Monorhina  with  the  Sturgeons  among  the 
Amphirhina.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Crossopterygian 
Ganoids  exhibit  the  closest  connection  with  Lepidosiren, 
and  thereby  with  the  Amphibia.  It  should  not  be 
forgotten  that  the  development  of  the  Lampreys  exhibits 
curious  points  of  resemblance  with  that  of  the  Amphibia, 
which  are  absent  in  the  Sharks  and  Eays.  Of  the 
development  of  the  Ganoidei  we  have  unfortunately  no 
knowledge,  but  their  brains  and  their  reproductive  organs 
are  more  amphibian  than  are  those  of  the  Sharks. 

On  the  whole,  I  am  disposed  to  think  that  the  direct 
stem  of  ascent  from  the  Monorliina  to  the  Amphibia  is 
formed  by  the  Ganoids  and  the  Mudfishes  ;  while  the 
Osseous  fishes  and  the  Sharks  are  branches  in  different 
directions  from  this  stem. 

What  the  Protamniota  were  like,  I  do  not  suppose 
any  one  is  in  a  position  to  say,  but  I  cannot  think  that 
the  thoroughly  Lacertian  Protorosaurus  had  anything  to 
do  with  them.  The  reptiles  which  are  most  amphibian 
in  their  characters,  and  therefore,  probably,  most  nearly 
approach  the  Protamniota,  are  the  Ichthyosauria  and 
the  Chelonia. 

That  the  Didelphia  were  developed  out  of  some 
ornithodelphous  form,  as  Professor  Haeckel  supposes, 
seems  to  be  unquestionable  ;  but  the  existing  Opossums 
and  Kangaroos  are  certainly  extremely  modified  and 
remote  from  their  ancestors  the  "  Prodidelphia"  of  which 
we  have  not,  at  present  the  slightest  knowledge.  The 


286  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [xi. 

mode  of  origin  of  the  Monodelphia  from  these  is  a  very 
difficult  problem,  for  the  most  part  left  open  by  Professor 
Haeckel.  He  considers  the  PrtosimicB,  or  Lemurs,  to  be 
the  common  stock  of  the  Deciduata,  and  the  Cetacea 
(with  which  he  includes  the  Sirenia)  to  be  modified 
Ungulata.  As  regards  the  latter  question,  I  have  little 
doubt  that  the  Sirenia  connect  the  Ungulata  with  the 
Proboscidea ;  and  none,  that  the  Cetacea  are  extremely 
modified  Carnivora.  The  passage  between  the  Seals 
and  the  Cetacea  by  Zeuglodon  is  complete.  I  also  think 
that  there  is  much  to  be  said  for  the  opinion,  that  the 
Insectivora  represent  the  common  stock  of  the  Primates 
(which  passed  into  them  by  the  Prosimice),  the  Chei- 
roptera, the  Rodentia,  and  the  Carnivora.  And  I  am 
greatly  disposed  to  look  for  the  common  root  of  all 
the  Ungulata,  as  well,  in  some  ancient  non-deciduate 
Mammals  which  were  more  like  Insectivora  than  any- 
thing else.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Edentata  appear  to 
form  a  series  by  themselves. 

The  latter  part  of  this  notice  of  the  Natilrliche 
Scliopfungs-Geschichte,  brings  so  strongly  into  pro- 
minence the  points  of  difference  between  its  able 
author  and  myself,  that  I  do  not  like  to  conclude 
without  reminding  the  reader  of  my  entire  concurrence 
with  the  general  tenor  and  spirit  of  the  work,  and  of 
my  high  estimate  of  its  value. 


XII. 


BISHOP  BEKKELEY  ON  THE  METAPHYSICS  OF 
SENSATION.1 

PROFESSOR  FRASER  has  earned  the  thanks  of  all  students 
of  philosophy  for  the  conscientious  labour  which  he  has 
bestowed  upon  his  new  edition  of  the  works  of  Berkeley  ; 
in  which,  for  the  first  time,  we  find  collected  together 
every  thought  which  can  be  traced  to  the  subtle  and 
penetrating  rnind  of  the  famous  Bishop  of  Cloyne  ;  while 
the  "  Life  and  Letters  "  will  rejoice  those  who  care  less 
for  the  idealist  and  the  prophet  of  tar-water,  than  for 
the  man  who  stands  out  as  one  of  the  noblest  and  purest 
figures  of  his  time :  that  Berkeley  from  whom  the  jealousy 
of  Pope  did  not  withhold  a  single  one  of  all  "  the  vir- 
tues under  heaven ; "  nor  the  cynicism  of  Swift,  the 
dignity  of  "one  of  the  first  men  of  the  kingdom  for 
learning  and  virtue  ; "  the  man  whom  the  pious  Atter- 
bury  could  compare  to  nothing  less  than  an  angel ;  and 
whose  personal  influence  and  eloquence  filled  the  Scrib- 
lerus  Club  and  the  House  of  Commons  with  enthusiasm 
for  the  evangelization  of  the  North  American  Indians ; 

i  "  The  Works  of  George  Berkeley,  D.D.,  formerly  Bishop  of  Cloyne,  in- 
cluding many  of  his  Works  hitherto  unpublished,  with  Preface,  Annotations, 
his  Life  and  Letters,  and  an  Account  of  his  Philosophy."  By  A.  C.  Eraser. 
Fourvols.  Oxford  :  Clarendon  Press,  1871. 


288  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [xn. 

and  even  led  Sir  Eobert  Walpole  to  assent  to  the  appro- 
priation of  public  money  to  a  scheme  which  was  neither 
business  nor  bribery.1 

Hardly  any  epoch  in  the  intellectual  history  of  Eng- 
land is  more  remarkable  in  itself,  or  possesses  a  greater 
interest  for  us  in  these  latter  days,  than  that  which  coin- 
cides broadly  with  the  conclusion  of  the  seventeenth  and 
the  opening  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

The  political  fermentation  of  the  preceding  age  was 
gradually  wrorking  itself  out ;  domestic  peace  gave  men 
time  to  think  ;  and  the  toleration  won  by  the  party  of 
which  Locke  was  the  spokesman,  permitted  a  freedom 
of  speech  and  of  writing  such  as  has  rarely  been  exceeded 
in  later  times. 

Fostered  by  these  circumstances,  the  great  faculty  for 
physical  and  metaphysical  inquiry,  with  which  the  people 
of  our  race  are  naturally  endowed,  developed  itself  vigo- 
rously ;  and  at  least  two  of  its  products  have  had  a 
profound  and  a  permanent  influence  upon  the  subsequent 
course  of  thought  in  'the  world.  The  one  of  these  was 
English  Freethinking ;  the  other,  the  Theory  of  Gravi- 
tation. 

Looking  back  to  the  origin  of  the  intellectual  im- 
pulses of  which  these  were  the  results,  we  are  led  to 
Herbert,  to  Hobbes,  to  Bacon ;  and  to  one  who  stands 
in  advance  of  all  these,  as  the  most  typical  man  of  his 
time — Descartes.  It  is  the  Cartesian  doubt — the  maxim 
that  assent  may  properly  be  given  to  no  propositions 
but  such  as  are  perfectly  clear  and  distinct — which, 
becoming  incarnate,  so  to  speak,  in  the  Englishmen, 

1  In  justice  to  Sir  Robert,  however,  it  is  proper  to  remark  that  lie  declared 
afterwards,  that  he  gave  his  assent  to  Berkeley's  scheme  for  the  Bermuda 
University  only  because  he  thought  the  House  of  Commons  was  sure  to  throw 
it  out. 


xii.]  THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  SENSATION.  289 

Anthony  Collins,  Toland,  Tinclal,  "Woolston,  and  in  the' 
wonderful  Frenchman,  Pierre  Bayle,  reached  its  final 
term  in  Hume. 

And,  on  the  other  hand,  although  the  theory  of 
Gravitation  set  aside  the  Cartesian  vortices — yet  the 
spirit  of  the  "  Principes  de  Philosophic "  attained  its 
apotheosis  when  Newton  demonstrated  all  the  host  of 
heaven  to  be  but  the  elements  of  a  vast  mechanism, 
regulated  by  the  same  laws  as  those  which  govern  the 
falling  of  a  stone  to  the  ground.  There  is  a  passage 
in  the  preface  to  the  first  edition  of  the  "  Principia " 
which  shows  that  Newton  was  penetrated,  as  completely 
as  Descartes,  with  the  belief  that  all  the  phenomena  of 
nature  are  expressible  in  terms  of  matter  and  motion. 

"  Would  that  the  rest,  of  the  phenomena  of  nature 
could  be  deduced  by  a  like  kind  of  reasoning  from 
mechanical  principles.  For  many  circumstances  lead  me 
to  suspect  that  all  these  phenomena  may  depend  upon 
certain  forces,  in  virtue  of  which  the  particles  of  bodies, 
by  causes  not  yet  known,  are  either  mutually  impelled 
against  one  another  and  cohere  into  regular  figures,  or 
repel  and  recede  from  one  another ;  which  forces  being 
unknown,  philosophers  have  as  yet  explored  nature 
in  vain.  But  I  hope  that,  either  by  this  method  of 
philosophizing,  or  by  some  other  and  better,  the  prin- 
ciples here  laid  down  may  throw  some  light  upon  the 
matter."1 

But  the  doctrine  that  all  the  phenomena  of  nature 
are  resolvable  into  mechanism  is  what  people  have 

1  "  Utinam  csotera  naturae  phenomena  ex  principiis  mechanicis,  eodera  argu- 
mentandi  genere,  derivare  licet.  Nam  multa  me  mo  vent,  ut  nonnihil  suspicer 
ea  omnia  ex  viribus  quibusdain  pendere  posse,  quibus  corporum  particulae,  per 
causas  nondum  cognitas,  vel  in  se  mutuo  impelluntur  et  secundum  figuras  regu- 
lares  cohserent  vel  ab  kivicem  fugantur  et  recedunt ;  quibus  viribus  ignotis, 
Pkilosophi  hactenus  Naturam  frustra  tentarunt.  Spero  autem  qu6d  vel  huic 
philosopliandi  modo,  vel  veriori;  alicui,  principia  hie  posita  lucem  aliquam  prae- 
bebunt,"— Preface  to  First  Edition  of  Principia,  May  8, 1686. 


290  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [xn. 

agreed  to  call  "  materialism ; "  and  when  Locke  and 
Collins  maintained  that  matter  may  possibly  be  able  to 
think,  and  Newton  himself  could  compare  infinite  space 
to  the  sensorium  of  the  Deity,  it  was  not  wonderful  that 
the  English  philosophers  should  be  attacked  as  they 
were  by  Leibnitz  in  the  famous  letter  to  the  Princess 
of  "Wales,  which  gave  rise  to  his  correspondence  with 
Clarke.1 

"  1.  Natural  religion  itself  seems  to  decay  [in  Eng- 
land] very  much.  Many  will  have  human  souls  to  be 
material ;  others  make  God  Himself  a  corporeal  Being. 

"  2.  Mr.  Locke  and  his  followers  are  uncertain,  at 
least,  whether  the  soul  be  not  material  and  naturally 
perishable.  * 

"  3.  Sir  Isaac  Newton  says  that  space  is  an  organ 
which  God  makes  use  of  to  perceive  things  by.  But  if 
God  stands  in  need  of  any  organ  to  perceive  things  by, 
it  will  follow  that  they  do  not  depend  altogether  upon 
Him,  nor  were  produced  by  Him. 

"  4.  Sir  Isaac  Newton  and  his  followers  have  also  a 
very  odd  opinion  concerning  the  work  of  God.  Ac- 
cording to  their  doctrine,  God  Almighty  wants  to  wind 
up  His  watch  from  time  to  time ;  otherwise  it  would 
cease  to  move.2  He  had  not,  it  seems,  sufficient  fore- 
sight to  make  it  a  perpetual  motion.  Nay,  the  machine 
of  God's  making  is  so  imperfect,  "according  to  these 
gentlemen,  that  He  is  obliged  to  clean  it  now  and  then 
by  an  extraordinary  concourse,  and  even  to  mend  it  as 
a  clockmaker  mends  his  work/' 

It  is  beside  the  mark,  at  present,  to  inquire  how  far 

1  "  Collection  of  Papers  which  passed  between  the  late  learned  Mr.  Leibnitz 
and  Dr.  Clarke."— 1717. 

s  Goethe  seems  to  have  had  this  saying  of  Leibnitz  in  his  mind  when  he 
wrote  his  famous  lines — 

"Was  war'  ein  Gott  der  nur  von  aussen  stiesse 
Im  Kreis  das  All  am  Finger  laufen  liesse." 


in.]  THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  SENSATION.  291 

Leibnitz  paints  a  true  picture,  and  how  far  he  is  guilty 
of  a  spiteful  caricature  of  Newton's  views  in  these  pas- 
sages ;  and  whether  the  beliefs  which  Locke  is  known 
to  have  entertained  are  consistent  with  the  conclusions 
which  may  logically  be  drawn  from  some  parts  of  his 
works.  It  is  undeniable  that  English  philosophy  in  Leib- 
nitz's time  had  the  general  character  which  he  ascribes 
to  it.  The  phenomena  of  nature  were  held  to  be  re- 
solvable into  the  attractions  and  the  repulsions  of  particles 
of  matter  ;  all  knowledge  was  attained  through  the  senses; 
the  mind  antecedent  to  experience  was  a  tabula  rasa. 
In  other  words,  at  the  commencement  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  the  character  of  speculative  thought  in  England 
was  essentially  sceptical,  critical,  and  materialistic.  Why 
"materialism3*  should  be  more  inconsistent  with  the 
existence  of  a  Deity,  the  freedom  of  the  will,  or  the 
immortality  of  the  soul,  or  with  any  actual  or  possible 
system  of  theology,  than  "  idealism,"  I  must  declare 
myself  at  a  loss  to  divine.  But  in  the  year  1700  all  the 
world  appears  to  have  been  agreed,  Tertullian  notwith- 
standing, that  materialism  necessarily  leads  to  very 
dreadful  consequences.  And  it  was  thought  that  it 
conduced  to  the  interests  of  religion  and  morality  to 
attack  the  materialists  with  all  the  weapons  that  came 
to  hand.  Perhaps  the  most  interesting  controversy 
which  arose  out  of  these  questions  is  the  wonderful 
triangular  duel  between  Dodwell,  Clarke,  and  Anthony 
Collins,  concerning  the  materiality  of  the  soul,  and — 
what  all  the  disputants  considered  to  be  the  necessary 
consequence  of  its  materiality — its  natural  mortality.  I 
do  not  think  that  anyone  can  read  the  letters  which 
passed  between  Clarke  and  Collins,  without  admitting 
that  Collins,  who  writes  with  wonderful  power  and  close- 
ness of  reasoning,  has  by  far  the  best  of  the  argument, 
so  far  as  the  possible  materiality  of  the  soul  goes ;  and 


292  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [xn. 

that,  in  this  battle,  the  Goliath  of  Freethinking  overcame 
the  champion  of  what  was  considered  Orthodoxy. 

But  in  Dublin,  all  this  while,  there  was  a  little  David 
practising  his  youthful  strength  upon  the  intellectual  lions 
and  bears  of  Trinity  College.  This  was  George  Berkeley, 
who  was  destined  to  give  the  same  kind  of  development 
to  the  idealistic  side  of  Descartes'  philosophy,  that  the 
Freethinkers  had  given  to  its  sceptical  side,  and  the 
Newtonians  to  its  mechanical  side. 

Berkeley  faced  the  problem  boldly.  He  said  to  the 
materialists  :  "  You  tell  me  that  all  the  phenomena  of 
nature  are  resolvable  into  matter  and  its  affections.  I 
assent  to  your  statement,  and  now  I  put  to  you  the 
further  question,  *  What  is  matter  \ '  In  answering  this 
question  you  shall  be  bound  by  your  own  conditions ; 
and  I  demand,  in  the  terms  of  the  Cartesian  axiom,  that 
in  turn  you  give  your  assent  only  to  such  conclusions  as 
are  perfectly  clear  and  obvious." 

It  is  this  great  argument  which  is  worked  out  in  the 
' 'Treatise  concerning  the  Principles  of  Human  Know- 
ledge," and  in  those  ''Dialogues  between  Hylas  and 
Philonous,"  which  rank  among  the  most  exquisite  ex- 
amples of  English  style,  as  well  as  among  the  subtlest 
of  metaphysical  writings  ;  and  the  final  conclusion  of 
which  is  summed  up  in  a  passage  remarkable  alike  for 
literary  beauty  and  for  calm  audacity  of  statement. 

"  Some  truths  there  are  so  near  and  obvious  to  the  mind  that  a  man 
need  only  open  his  eyes  to  see  them.  Such  I  take  this  important  one 
to  be,  viz.,  that  all  the  choir  of  heaven  and  furniture  of  the  earth — 
in  a  word,  all  those  bodies  which  compose  the  mighty  frame  of  the 
world — have  not  any  substance  without  a  mind ;  that  their  being  is 
to  be  perceived  or  known ;  that  consequently,  so  long  as  they  are 
not  actually  perceived  by  me,  or  do  not  exist  in  my  mind  or  that  of 
any  other  created  spirit,  they  must  either  have  no  existence  at  all 
or  else  subsist  in  the  mind  of  some  eternal  spirit ;  it  being  perfectly 
unintelligible,  and  involving  all  the  absurdity  of  abstraction,  to 


xii.]  THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  SENSATION.  293 

attribute  to  any  single  part  of  them  an  existence  independent  of  a 
spirit." x 

Doubtless  this  passage  sounds  like  the  acme  of  meta- 
physical paradox,  and  we  all  know  that  "  coxcombs 
vanquished  Berkeley  with  a  grin  ;  "  while  common-sense 
folk  refuted  him  by  stamping  on  the  ground,  or  some 
such  other  irrelevant  proceeding.  But  the  key  to  all 
philosophy  lies  in  the  clear  apprehension  of  Berkeley's 
problem — which  is  neither  more  nor  less  than  one  of  the 
shapes  of  the  greatest  of  all  questions,  "  What  are  the 
limits  of  our  faculties  ? "  And  it  is.  worth  any  amount 
of  trouble  to  comprehend  the  exact  nature  of  the  argu- 
ment by  which  Berkeley  arrived  at  his  results,  and  to 
know  by  one's  own  knowledge  the  great  truth  which  he 
discovered — that  the  honest  and  rigorous  following  up  of 
the  argument  which  leads  us  to  materialism,  inevitably 
carries  us  beyond  it. 

Suppose  that  I  accidentally  prick  my  finger  with  a 
pin.  I  immediately  become  aware  of  a  condition  of  my 
consciousness — a  feeling  which  I  term  pain.  I  have  no 
doubt  whatever  that  the  feeling  is  in  myself  alone  ;  and 
if  anyone  were  to  say  that  the  pain  I  feel  is  something 
which  inheres  in  the  needle,  as  one  of  the  qualities  of  the 
substance  of  the  needle,  we  should  all  laugh  at  the  ab- 
surdity of  the  phraseology.  In  fact,  it  is  utterly  impos- 
sible to  conceive  pain  except  as  a  state  of  consciousness. 

Hence,  so  far  as  pain  is  concerned,  it  is  sufficiently 
obvious  that  Berkeley's  phraseology  is  strictly  applicable 
to  our  power  of  conceiving  its  existence — "  its  being  is 
to  be  perceived  or  known,"  and  "  so  long  as  it  is  not 
actually  perceived  by  me,  or  does  not  exist  in  my  mind, 
or  that  of  any  other  created  spirit,  it  must  either  have 
no  existence  at  all,  or  else  subsist  in  the  mind  of  some 
eternal  spirit" 

1  "  Treatise  concerning  the  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,"  Part  I.  §  6. 


294  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [xn. 

So  mucli  for  pain.  Now  let  us  consider  an  ordinary 
sensation.  Let  the  point  of  the  pin  be  gently  rested 
upon  the  skin,  and  I  become  aware  of  a  feeling  or  con- 
dition of  consciousness  quite  different  from  the  former — 
the  sensation  of  what  I  call  "touch."  Nevertheless  this 
touch  is  plainly  just  as  much  in  myself  as  the  pain  was. 
I  cannot  for  a  moment  conceive  this  something  which 
I  call  touch  as  existing  apart  from  myself,  or  a  being 
capable  of  the  same  feelings  as  myself.  And  the  same 
reasoning  applies  to  all  the  other  simple  sensations.  A 
moment's  reflection  is  sufficient  to  convince  one  that  the 
smell,  and  the  taste,  and  the  yellowness,  of  which  we 
become  aware  when  an  orange  is  smelt,  tasted,  and  seen, 
are  as  completely  states  of  our  consciousness  as  is  the 
pain  which  arises  if  the  orange  happens  to  be  too  sour. 
Nor  is  it  less  clear  that  every  sound  is  a  state  of  the 
consciousness  of  him  who  hears  it.  If  the  universe 
contained  only  blind  and  deaf  beings,  it  is  impossible 
for  us  to  imagine  but  that  darkness  and  silence  should 
reign  everywhere. 

It  is  undoubtedly  true,  then,  of  all  the  simple  sensa- 
tions that,  as  Berkeley  says,  their  *  •  esse  is  per  dpi" — 
their  being  is  to  be  "  perceived  or  known."  But  that 
which  perceives,  or  knows,  is  mind  or  spirit ;  and  there- 
fore that  knowledge  which  the  senses  give  us  is,  after  all, 
a  knowledge  of  spiritual  phenomena. 

All  this  was  explicitly  or  implicitly  admitted,  and, 
indeed,  insisted  upon,  by  Berkeley's  contemporaries,  and 
by  no  one  more  strongly  than  by  Locke,  who  terms 
smells,  tastes,  colours,  sounds,  and  the  like,  "  secondary 
qualities,"  and  observes,  with  respect  to  these  "secondary 
qualities,"  that  "whatever  reality  we  by  mistake  attri- 
bute to  them  [they]  are  in  truth  nothing  in  the  objects 
themselves." 

And  again  :  "  Flame  is  denominated  hot  and  light ; 


xn.]  THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  SENSATION.  295 

snow,  white  and  cold  ;  and  manna,  white  and  sweet, 
from  the  ideas  they  produce  in  us  ;  which  qualities  are 
commonly  thought  to  be  the  same  in  these  bodies  ;  that 
those  ideas  are  in  us,  the  one  the  perfect  resemblance  of 
the  other  as  they  are  in  a  mirror  ;  and  it  would  by  most 
men  be  judged  very  extravagant  if  one  should  say  other- 
wise. And  yet  he  that  will  consider  that  the  same  fire 
that  at  one  distance  produces  in  us  the  sensation  of 
warmth,  does  at  a  nearer  approach  produce  in  us  the 
far  different  sensation  of  pain,  ought  to  bethink  himself 
what  -reason  he  has  to  say  that  his  idea  of  warmth, 
which  was  produced  in  him  by  the  fire,  is  actually  in 
the  fire ;  and  his  idea  of  pain  which  the  same  fire  pro- 
duced in  him  in  the  same  way,  is  not  in  the  fire.  "Why 
are  whiteness  and  coldness  in  snow,  and  pain  not,  when  it 
produces  the  one  and  the  other  idea  in  us ;  and  can  do 
neither  but  by  the  bulk,  figure,  number,  and  motion  of 
its  solid  parts  1 " 1 

Thus  far  then  materialists  and  idealists  are  agreed. 
Locke  and  Berkeley,  and  all  logical  thinkers  who  have 
succeeded  them,  are  of  one  mind  about  secondary 
qualities — their  being  is  to  be  perceived  or  known— 
their  materiality  is,  in  strictness,  a  spirituality. 

But  Locke  draws  a  great  distinction  between  the 
secondary  qualities  of  matter,  and  certain  others  which 
he  terms  "primary  qualities."  These  are  extension, 
figure,  solidity,  motion  and  rest,  and  number ;  and  he  is 
as  clear  that  these  primary  qualities  exist  independently 
of  the  mind,  as  he  is  that  the  secondary  qualities  have 
no  such  existence. 

"  The  particular  bulk,  number,  figure,  and  motion  of  the  parts  of 
fire  and  snow  are  really  in  them,  whether  anyone's  senses  perceive 
them  or  not,  and  therefore  they  may  be  called  real  qualities,  because 
they  really  exist  in  those  bodies ;  but  light,  heat,  whiteness,  or  coldness, 

*  Locke,  "Human  Understanding/'  Book  IT.  chap.  viii.  §§14, 15. 


296  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [x:i. 

are  no  more  really  in  them,  than  sickness,  or  pain,  is  in  manna.  Take 
away  the  sensation  of  them ;  let  not  the  eyes  see  light  or  colours,  nor 
the  ears  hear  sounds ;  let  the  palate  not  taste,  nor  the  nose  smell ; 
and  all  colours,  tastes,  odours  and  sounds,  as  they  are  such  particular 
ideas,  vanish  and  cease,  and  are  reduced  to  their  causes,  t.  e.  bulk, 
figure,  and  motion  of  parts. 

"18.  A  piece  of  manna  of  sensible  bulk  is  able  to  produce  in  us 
the  idea  of  a  round  or  square  figure ;  and,  by  being  removed  from  one 
place  to  another,  the  idea  of  motion.  This  idea  of  motion  represents 
it  as  it  really  is  in  the  manna  moving ;  a  circle  and  square  are  the 
same,  -whether  in  idea  or  existence,  in  the  mind  or  in  the  manna ;  and 
thus  both  motion  and  figure  are  really  in  the  manna,  whether  we  take 
notice  of  them  or  no  :  this  everybody  is  ready  to  agree  to." 

So  far  as  primary  qualities  are  concerned,  then, 
Locke  is  as  thoroughgoing  a  realist  as  St.  Anselm.  In 
Berkeley,  on  the  other  hand,  we  have  as  complete  a 
representative  of.  the  nominalists  and  conceptualists — an 
intellectual  descendant  of  Eoscellinus  and  of  Abelard. 
And  by  a  curious  irony  of  fate,  it  is  the  nominalist  who 
is,  this  time,  the  champion  of  orthodoxy,  and  the  realist 
that  of  heresy. 

Once  more  let  us  try  to  work  out  Berkeley's  principles 
for  ourselves,  and  inquire  what  foundation  there  is  for 
the  assertion  that  extension,  form,  solidity,  and  the 
other  "  primary  qualities,"  have  an  existence  apart  from 
mind.  And  for  this  purpose  let  us  recur  to  our  experi- 
ment with  the  pin. 

It  has  been  seen  that  when  the  finger  is  pricked  with 
a  pin,  a  state  of  consciousness  arises  which  we  call  pain  ; 
and  it  is  admitted  that  this  pain  is  not  a  something 
which  inheres  in  the  pin,  but  a  something  which  exists 
only  in  the  mind,  and  has  no  similitude  elsewhere. 

But  a  little  attention  will  show  that  this  state  of 
consciousness  is  accompanied  by  another,  which  can  by 
no  effort  be  got  rid  of.  I  not  only  have  the  feeling,  but 
the  feeling  is  localized.  I  am  just  as  certain  that  the 
pain  is  in  my  finger,  as  I  am  that  I  have  it  at  all. 


xii.]  THE  METAPHYSICS  OF 

Nor  will  any  effort  of  the  imaginafR 
believe  that  the  pain  is  not  in  my  finger. 

And  yet  nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  it  is  not, 
and  cannot  be,  in  the  spot  in  which  I  feel  it,  nor  within 
a  couple  of  feet  of  that  spot.  For  the  skin  of  the  finger 
is  connected  by  a  bundle  of  fine  nervous  fibres,  which 
run  up  the  whole  length  of  the  arm,  with  the  spinal 
marrow  and  brain,  and  we  know  that  the  feeling  of  pain 
caused  by  the  prick  of  a  pin  is  dependent  on  the  integrity 
of  those  fibres.  After  they  have  been  cut  through  close 
to  the  spinal  cord,  no  pain  will  be  felt,  whatever  injury 
is  done  to  the  finger ;  and  if  the  ends  which  remain  in 
connection  with  the  cord  be  pricked,  the  pain  which 
arises  will  appear  to  have  its  seat  in  the  finger  just  as 
distinctly  as  before.  Nay,  if  the  whole  arm  be  cut  off, 
the  pain  which  arises  from  pricking  the  nerve  stump  will 
appear  to  be  seated  in  the  fingers,  just  as  if  they  were 
still  connected  with  the  body. 

It  is  perfectly  obvious,  therefore,  that  the. localization 
of  the  pain  at  the  surface  of  the  body  is  an  act  of  the 
mind.  It  is  an  extradition  of  that  consciousness,  which 
has  its  seat  in  the  brain,  to  a  definite  point  of  the 
body — which  takes  place  without  our  volition,  and  may 
give  rise  to  ideas  which  are  contrary  to  fact.  We  might 
call  this  extradition  of  consciousness  a  reflex  feeling, 
just  as  we  speak  of  a  movement  which  is  excited  apart 
from,  or,  contrary  to,  our  volition,  as  a  reflex  motion. 
Locality  is  no  more  in  the  pin  than  pain  is ;  of  the 
former,  as  of  the  latter,  it  is  true  that  "  its  being  is  to 
be  perceived,"  and  that  its  existence  apart  from  a  think- 
ing mind  is  not  conceivable. 

The  foregoing  reasoning  will  be  in  no  way  affected,  if, 
instead  of  pricking  the  finger,  the  point  of  the  pin  rests 
gently  against  it,  so  as  to  give  rise  merely  to  a  tactile 
sensation.  The  tactile  sensation  is  referred  outwards  to 


298  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [xn. 

the  point  touched,  and  seems  to  exist  there.  But  it 
is  certain  that  it  is  not  and  cannot  be  there  really, 
because  the  brain  is  the  sole  seat  of  consciousness  ;  and, 
further,  because  evidence,  as  strong  as  that  in  favour 
of  the  sensation  being  in  the  finger,  can  be  brought 
forward  in  support  of  propositions  which  are  manifestly 
absurd. 

For  example,  the  hairs  and  nails  are  utterly  devoid 
of  sensibility,  as  everyone  knows.  Nevertheless,  if  the 
ends  of  the  nails  or  hairs  are  touched,  ever  so  lightly,  we 
feel  that  they  are^touched,  and  the  sensation  seems  to  be 
situated  in  the  nails  or  hairs.  Nay  more,  if  a  walking- 
stick  a  yard  long  is  held  firmly  by  the  handle  and  the 
other  end  is  touched,  the  tactile  sensation,  which  is  a 
state  of  our  own  consciousness,  is  unhesitatingly  referred 
to  the  end  of  the  stick ;  and  yet  no  one  will  say  that  it 
is  there. 

Let  us  now  suppose  that,  instead  of  one  pin's  point 
resting  agamst  the  end  of  my  finger,  there  are  two. 
Each  of  these  can  be  known  to  me,  as  we  have  seen, 
only  as  a  state  of  a  thinking  mind,  referred  outwards,  or 
localized.  But  the  existence  of  these  two  states,  some- 
how or  other,  generates  in  my  mind  a  host  of  new  ideas, 
which  did  not  make  their  appearance  when  only  one 
state  was  present. 

For  example,  I  get  the  ideas  of  co-existence,  of 
number,  of  distance,  and  of  relative  place  or  direction. 
But  all  these  ideas  are  ideas  of  relations,  and  imply  the 
existence  of  something  which  perceives  those  relations. 
If  a  tactile  sensation  is  a  state  of  the  mind,  and  if  the 
localization  of  that  sensation  is  an  act  of  the  mind,  how 
is  it  conceivable  that  a  relation  between  two  localized 
sensations  should  exist  apart  from  the  mind  ?  It  is,  I 
confess,  quite  as  easy  for  me  to  imagine  that  redness 
may  exist  apart  from  a  visual  sense,  as  it  is  to  suppose 


xii.J  THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  SENSATION.  299 

that  co-existence,  number,  and  distance  can  have  any 
existence  apart  from  the  mind  of  which  they  are  ideas. 

Thus  it  seems  clear  that  the  existence  of  some,  at  any 
rate,  of  Locke's  primary  qualities  of  matter,  such  as 
number  and  extension,  apart  from  mind,  is  as  utterly 
unthinkable  as  the  existence  of  colour  and  sound  under 
like  circumstances. 

Will  the  others — namely,  figure,  motion  and  rest,  and 
solidity — withstand  a  similar  criticism  ?  I  think  not. 
For  all  these,  like  the  foregoing,  are  perceptions  by  the 
mind  of  the  relations  of  two  or  more»sensations  to  one 
another.  If  distance  and  place  are  inconceivable,  in  the 
absence  of  the  mind  of  which  they  are  ideas,  the  inde- 
pendent existence  of  figure,  which  is  the  limitation  of 
distance,  and  of  motion,  which  is  change  of  place,  must 
be  equally  inconceivable.  Solidity  requires  more  par- 
ticular consideration,  as  it  is  a  term  applied  to  two  very 
different  things,  the  one  of  which  is  solidity  of  form, 
or  geometrical  solidity;  while  the  other  is  solidity  of 
substance,  or  mechanical  solidity. 

If  those  motor  nerves  of  a  man  by  which  volitions  are 
converted  into  motion  were  all  paralysed,  and  if  sensa- 
tion remained  only  in  the  palm  of  his  hand  (which  is  a 
conceivable  case),  he  would  still  be  able  to  attain  to 
clear  notions  of  extension,  figure,  number,  and  motion,  by 
attending  to  the  states  of  consciousness  which  might  be 
aroused  by  the  contact  of  bodies  with  the  sensory  surface 
of  the  palm.  But  it  does  not  appear  that  such  a  person 
could  arrive  at  any  conception  of  geometrical  solidity. 
For  that  which  does  not  come  in  contact  with  the 
sensory  surface  is  non-existent  for  the  sense  of  touch  ; 
and  a  solid  body,  impressed  upon  the  palm  of  the  hand, 
gives  rise  only  to  the  notion  of  the  extension  of  that 
particular  part  of  the  solid  which  is  in  contact  with 

the  skin. 

14  , 


300  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [xir. 

Nor  is  it  possible  that  the  idea  of  outness  (in  the 
sense  of  discontinuity  with  the  sentient  body)  could  be 
attained  by  such  a  person ;  for,  as  we  have  seen,  every 
tactile  sensation  is  referred  to  a  point  either  of  the 
natural  sensory  surface  itself,  or  of  some  solid  in  con- 
tinuity with  that  surface.  Hence  it  would  appear  that 
the  conception  of  the  difference  between  the  Ego  and 
the  non-Ego  could  not  be  attained  by  a  man  thus 
situated.  His  feelings  would  be  his  universe,  and  his 
tactile  sensations  his  "mcenia  mundi."  Time  would 
exist  for  him  as  for  us,  but  space  would  have  only  two 
dimensions. 

But  now  remove  the  paralysis  from  the  motor  appa- 
ratus, and  give  the  palm  of  the  hand  of  our  imaginary 
man  perfect  freedom  to  move,  so  as  to  be  able  to  glide 
in  all  directions  over  the  bodies  with  which  it  is  in  con- 
tact. Then  with  the  consciousness  of  that  mobility,  the 
notion  of  space  of  three  dimensions — which  is  " Raum" 
or  "  room  "  to  move  with  perfect  freedom — is  at  once 
given.  But  the  notion  that  the  tactile  surface  itself 
moves,  cannot  be  given  by  touch  alone,  which  is  com- 
petent to  testify  only  to  the  fact  of  change  of  place,  not 
to  its  cause.  The  idea  of  the  motion  of  the  tactile 
surface  could  not,  in  fact,  be  attained,  unless  the  idea 
of  change  of  place  were  accompanied  by  some  state  of 
consciousness,  which  does  not  exist  when  the  tactile  sur- 
face is  immoveable.  This  state  of  consciousness  is  what 
is  termed  the  muscular  sense,  and  its  existence  is  very 
easily  demonstrable. 

Suppose  the  back  of  my  hand  to  rest  upon  a  table, 
and  a  sovereign  to  rest  upon  the  upturned  palm,  I  at 
once  acquire  a  notion  of  extension,  and  of  the  limit  of 
that  extension.  The  impression  made  by  the  circular 
piece  of  gold  is  quite  different  from  that  which  would 
be  made  by  a  triangular,  or  a  square,  piece  of  the  same 


xii.]  THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  SENSATION.  301 

size,  and  thereby 1  arrive  at  the  notion  of  figure.  More- 
over, if  the  sovereign  slides  over  the  palm,  I  acquire  a 
distinct  conception  of  change  of  place  or  motion,  and 
of  the  direction  of  that  motion.  For  as  the  sovereign 
slides,  it  affects  new  nerve-endings,  and  gives  rise  to  new 
states  of  consciousness.  Each  of  them  is  definitely  and 
separately  localized  by  a  reflex  act  of  the  mind,  which, 
at  the  same  time,  becomes  aware  of  the  difference  between 
two  successive  localizations;  and  therefore  of  change  of 
place,  which  is  motion. 

If,  while  the  sovereign  lies  on  the  hand,  the  latter 
being  kept  quite  steady,  the  fore-arm  is  gradually  and 
slowly  raised ;  the  tactile  sensations,  with  all  their  accom- 
paniments, remain  exactly  as  they  were.  But,  at  the 
same  time,  something  new  is  introduced;  namely,  the 
sense  of  effort.  If  I  try  to  discover  where  this  sense  of 
effort  seems  to  be,  I  find  myself  somewhat  perplexed  at 
first ;  but,  if  I  hold  the  fore-arm  in  position  long  enough, 
I  become  aware  of  an  obscure  sense  of  fatigue,  which  is 
apparently  seated  either  in  the  muscles  of  the  arm,  or  in 
the  integument  directly  over  them.  The  fatigue  seems 
to  be  related  to  the  sense  of  effort,  in  much  the  same 
way  as  the  pain  which  supervenes  upon  the  original 
sense  of  contact,  when  a  pin  is  slowly  pressed  against 
the  skin,  is  related  to  touch. 

A  little  attention  will  show  that  this  sense  of  effort 
accompanies  every  muscular  contraction  by  which  the 
limbs,  or  other  parts  of  the  body,  are  moved.  By  its 
agency  the  fact  of  their  movement  is  known  ;  while  the 
direction  of  the  motion  is  given  by  the  accompanying 
tactile  sensations.  And,  in  consequence  of  thev  incessant 
association  of  the  muscular  and  the  tactile  sensations, 
they  become  so  fused  together  that  they  are  often  con- 
founded under  the  same  name. 

If  freedom  to  move  in  all  directions  is  the  very  essence 


302  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [xn. 

of  that  conception  of  space  of  three  dimensions  which 
we  obtain  by  the  sense  of  touch  ;  and  if  tL  .freedom  to 
move  is  really  another  name  for  the  feeling  of  unopposed 
effort,  accompanied  by  that  of  change  of  place,  it  is  surely 
impossible  to  conceive  of  such  space  as  having  existence 
apart  from  that  which  is  conscious  of  effort. 

But  it  may  be  said  that  we  derive  our  conception  of 
space  of  three  dimensions  not  only  from  touch,  but  from 
vision ;  that  if  we  do  not  feel  things  actually  outside  us, 
at  any  rate  we  see  them.  And  it  was  exactly  this  diffi- 
culty which  presented  itself  to  Berkeley  at  the  outset  of 
his  speculations.  He  met  it,  with  characteristic  bold- 
ness, by  denying  that  we  do  see  things  outside  us  ;  and, 
with  no  less  characteristic  ingenuity,  by  devising  that 
"New  Theory  of  Vision"  which  has  met  with  wider 
acceptance  than  any  of  his  views,  though  it  has  been  the 
subject  of  continual  controversies.1 

In  the  "  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,"  Berkeley 
himself  tells  us  how  he  was  led  to  those  views  which 
he  published  in  the  "  Essay  towards  the  New  Theory 
of  Vision." 

"  It  will  be  objected  that  we  see  things  actually  without,  or  at 
a  distance  from  us,  and  which  consequently  do  not  exist  in  the  mind  ; 
it  being  absurd  that  those  things  which  are  seen  at  the  distance  of 
several  miles,  should  be  as  near  to  us  as  our  own  thoughts.  In  answer 
to  this,  I  desire  it  may  be  considered  that  in  a  dream  we  do  oft  perceive 
things  as  existing  at  a  great  distance  off,  and  yet,  for  all  that,  those 
things  are  acknowledged  to  have  their  existence  only  in  the  mind. 

"  But  for  the  fuller  clearing  of  this  point,  it  may  be  worth  while  to 
consider  how  it  is  that  we  perceive  distance  and  things  placed  at  a 
distance  by  sight.  For  that  we  should  in  truth  see  external  space 
and  bodies  actually  existing  in  it,  some  nearer,  others  further  off, 

1  I  have  not  specifically  alluded  to  the  writings  of  Bailey,  Mill,  Abbott,  and 
others,  on  this  vexed  question,  not  because  I  have  failed  to  study  them  carefully, 
but  because  this  is  not  a  convenient  occasion  for  controversial  discussion. 
Those  who  are  acquainted  with  tlie  subject,  however,  will  observe  that  the  view 
I  have  taken  agrees  substantially  with  that  of  Mr.  Bailey. 


xii.]  THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  SENSATION.  303 

seems  to  carry  with  it  some  opposition  to  what  hath  been  said  of  their 
existing  nowhere  without  the  mind.  The  consideration  of  this 
difficulty  it  \  .  that  gave  birth  to  my  '  Essay  towards  the  New 
Theory  of  Vision/  which  was  published  not  long  since,  wherein  it  is 
shown  that  distance,  or  outness,  is  neither  immediately  of  itself  per- 
ceived by  sight,  nor  yet  apprehended,  or  judged  of,  by  lines  and  angles 
or  anything  that  hath  any  necessary  connection  with  it ;  but  that  it 
is  only  suggested  to  our  thoughts  by  certain  visible  ideas  and  sensa- 
tions attending  vision,  which,  in  their  own  nature,  have  no  manner 
of  similitude  or  relation  either  with  distance,  or  with  things  placed  . 
at  a  distance  ;  but  by  a  connection  taught  us  by  experience,  they 
come  to  signify  and  suggest  them  to  us,  after  the  same  manner  that 
words  of  any  language  suggest  the  ideas  they  are  made  to  stand 
for ;  insomuch  that  a  man  born  blind  and  afterwards  made  to  see, 
would  not,  at  first  sight,  think  the  things  he  saw  to  be  without  his 
mind  or  at  any  distance  from  him." 

The  key-note  of  the  Essay  to  which  Berkeley  refers 
in  this  passage  is  to  be  found  in  an  italicized  paragraph 
of  section  127  : — 

"  The  extensions,  figures,  and  motions  perceived  by  sight  are  specifically 
distinct  from  the  ideas  of  touch  called  by  the  same  names  ;  nor  is  there 
any  such  thing  as  an  idea,  or  kind  of  idea,  common  to  both  senses.1' 

It  will  be  observed  that  this  proposition  expressly 
declares  that  extension,  figure,  and  motion,  and  conse- 
quently distance,  are  immediately  perceived  by  sight  as 
well  as  by  touch  ;  but  that  visual  distance,  extension, 
figure,  and  motion,  are  totally  different  in  quality  from 
the  ideas  of  the  same  name  obtained  through  the  sense 
of  touch.  And  other  passages  leave  no  doubt  that  such 
was  Berkeley's  meaning.  Thus  in  the  112th  section  of 
the  same  Essay,  he  carefully  defines  the  two  kinds  of 
distance,  one  visual,  the  other  tangible  : — 

"  By  the  distance  between  any  two  points  nothing  more  is  meant 
than  the  number  of  intermediate  points.  If  the  given  points  are 
visible,  the  distance  between  them  is  marked  out  by  the  number 
of  interjacent  visible  points;  if  they  are  tangible,  the  distance  between 
them  is  a  line  consisting  of  tangible  points." 


304  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [xn. 

Again,  there  are  two  sorts  of  magnitude  or  exten- 
sion : — 

"  It  has  been  shown  that  there  are  two  sorts  of  objects  apprehended 
by  sight,  each  whereof  has  its  distinct  magnitude  or  extension :  the 
one  properly  tangible,  i.e.  to  be  perceived  and  measured  by  touch,  and 
not  immediately  falling  under  the  sense  of  seeing ;  the  other  properly 
and  immediately  visible,  by  mediation  of  which  the  former  is  brought 
into  view." — §  55. 

But  how  are  we  to  reconcile  these  passages  with  others 
which  will  be  perfectly  familiar  to  every  reader  of  the 
"  New  Theory  of  Vision  "  ?  As,  for  example  : — • 

"It  is,  I  think,  agreed  by  all,  that  distance  of  itself,  and  imme- 
diately, cannot  be  seen." — §  2. 

"  Space  or  distance,  we  have  shown,  is  no  otherwise  the  object  of 
sight  than  of  hearing."— §  130. 

"  Distance  is  in  its  own  nature  imperceptible,  and  yet  it  is  per- 
ceived by  sight.  It  remains,  therefore,  that  it  is  brought  into  view  by 
means  of  some  other  idea,  that  is  itself  immediately  perceived  in  the 
act  of  vision." — §  11. 

"Distance  or  external  space." — §  155. 

The  explanation  is  quite  simple,  and  lies  in  the  fact 
that  Berkeley  uses  the  word  "distance"  in  three  senses. 
Sometimes  he  employs  it  to  denote  visible  distance,  and 
then  he  restricts  it  to  distance  in  two  dimensions,  or 
simple  extension.  Sometimes  he  means  tangible  distance 
in  two  dimensions ;  but  most  commonly  he  intends  to 
signify  tangible  distance  in  the  third  dimension.  And 
it  is  in  this  sense  that  he  employs  "distance"  as  the 
equivalent  of  "space."  Distance  in  two  dimensions  is, 
for  Berkeley,  not  space,  but  extension.  By  taking  a 
pencil  and  interpolating  the  words  "visible"  and  "tan- 
gible "  before  "  distance "  wherever  the  context  renders 
them  necessary,  Berkeley's  statements  may  be  made  per- 
fectly consistent ;  though  he  has  not  always  extricated 
himself  from  the  entanglement  caused  by  his  own  loose 
phraseology,  which  rises  to  a  climax  in  the  last  ten 


xii.]  THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  SENSATION.  305 

sections  of  the  "  Theory  of  Vision,"  in  which  he  endea- 
vours to  prove  that  a  pure  intelligence  able  to  see,  but 
devoid  of  the  sense  of  touch,  could  have  no  idea  of  a 
plane  figure.  Thus  he  says  in  section  156  : — 

"  All  that  is  properly  perceived  by  the  visual  faculty  amounts  to 
no  more  than  colours  with  their  variations  and  different  proportions 
of  light  and  shade ;  but  the  perpetual  mutability  and  fleetingness 
of  those  immediate  objects  of  sight  render  them  incapable  of  being 
managed  after  the  manner  of  geometrical  figures,  nor  is  it  in  any 
degree  useful  that  they  should.  It  is  true  there  be  divers  of  them 
perceived  at  once,  and  more  of  some  and  less  of  others  ;  but  accurately 
to  compute  their  magnitude,  and  assign  precise  determinate  proportions 
between  things  so  variable  and  inconstant,  if  we  suppose  it  possible  to 
be  done,  must  yet  be  a  very  trifling  and  insignificant  labour." 

If,  by  this,  Berkeley  means  that  by  vision  alone,  a 
straight  line  cannot  be  distinguished  from  a  curved  one, 
a  circle  from  a  square,  a  long  line  from  a  short  one,  a 
large  angle  from  a  small  one,  his  position  is  surely 
absurd  in  itself  and  contradictory  to  his  own  previously 
cited  admissions ;  if  he  only  means,  on  tho  other  hand, 
that  his  pure  spirit  could  not  get  very  far  on  in  his 
geometry,  it  may  be  true  or  not ;  but  it  is  in  contra- 
diction with  his  previous  assertion,  that  such  a  pure 
spirit  could  never  attain  to  know  as  much  as  the  first 
elements  of  plane  geometry. 

Another  source  of  confusion,  which  arises  out  of  Berke- 
ley's insufficient  exactness  in  the  use  of  language,  is  to 
be  found  in  what  he  says  about  solidity,  in  discussing 
Molyneux's  problem,  whether  a  man  born  blind  and 
having  learned  to  distinguish  between  a  cube  and  a 
sphere,  could;  on  receiving  his  sight,  tell  the  one  from 
the  other  by  vision.  Berkeley  agrees  with  Locke  that 
he  could  not,  and  adds  the  following  reflection  : — 

"  Cube,  sphere,  table,  are  words  he  has  known  applied  to  things 
perceivable  by  touch,  but  to  things  perfectly  intangible  he  never 
knew  them  applied.  Those  words  in  their  wonted  application  always 


306  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [xn. 

marked  out  to  his  mind  bodies  or  solid  things  which  were  perceived  by 
the  resistance  they  gave.  But  there  is  no  solidity,  no  resistance  or 
protrusion  perceived  by  sight." 

Here  "  solidity  "  means  resistance  to  pressure,  which  is 
apprehended  by  the  muscular  sense  ;  but  when  in  section 
154  Berkeley  says  of  his  pure  intelligence — 

"  It  is  certain  that  the  aforesaid  intelligence  could  have  no  idea  of  a 
solid  or  quantity  of  three  dimensions,  which  follows  from  its  not  having 
any  idea  of  distance  " — 

he  refers,  to  that  notion  of  solidity  which  may  be  ob- 
tained by  the  tactile  sense,  without  the  addition  of  any 
notion  of  resistance  in  the  solid  object ;  as,  for  example, 
when  the  finger  passes  lightly  over  the  surface  of  a 
billiard  ball. 

Yet  another  source  of  difficulty  in  clearly  understand- 
ing Berkeley  arises  out  of  his  use  of  the  word  "  outness." 
In  speaking  of  touch  he  seems  to  employ  it  indifferently, 
both  for  the  localization  of  a  tactile  sensation  in  the 
sensory  surface,  which  we  really  obtain  through  touch  ; 
and  for  the  notion  of  corporeal  separation,  which  is 
attained  by  the  association  of  muscular  and  tactile 
sensations.  In  speaking  of  sight,  on  the  other  hand, 
Berkeley  employs  "  outness  "  to  denote  corporeal  sepa- 
ration. 

When  due  allowance  is  made  for  the  occasional  loose- 
ness and  ambiguity  of  Berkeley's  terminology,  and  the 
accessories  are  weeded  out  of  the  essential  parts  of  his 
famous  Essay,  his  views  may,  I  believe,  be  fairly  and 
accurately  summed  up  in  the  following  propositions  :— 

1.  The  sense  of  touch  gives  rise  to  ideas  of  extension, 
figure,  magnitude,  and  motion. 

2.  The  sense  of  touch  gives  rise  to  the  idea  of  "  out- 
ness," in  the  sense  of  localization. 

3.  The  sense  of  touch  gives  rise  to  the  idea  of  resist- 


XIL]  THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  SENSATION.  307 

ance,  and   thence   to  that  of  solidity,  in  the  sense  of 
impenetrability. 

4.  The  sense  of  touch  gives  rise  to  the  idea  of  "  out- 
ness," in  the  sense  of  distance  in  the  third  dimension, 
and  thence  to  that  of  space,  or  geometrical  solidity. 

5.  The  sense  of  sight  gives  rise  to  ideas  of  extension, 
of  figure,  magnitude,  and  motion. 

6.  The  sense  of  sight  does  not  give  rise  to  the  idea  of 
"  outness/'  in  the  sense  of  distance  in  the  third  dimen- 
sion, nor  to  that  of  geometrical  solidity,  no  visual  idea 
appearing  to  be  without  the  mind,  or  at  any  distance 
off  (H  43,  50). 

7.  The  sense  of  sight  does  not  give  rise  to  the  idea  of 
mechanical  solidity. 

8.  There  is  no  likeness  whatever  between  the  tactile 
ideas  called  extension,  figure,  magnitude,  and  motion, 
and  the  visual  ideas  which  go  by  the  same  names ;  nor 
are  any  ideas  common  to  the  two  senses. 

9.  When  we  think  we  see  objects  at  a  distance,  what 
really  happens  is  that  the  visual  picture  suggests  that  the 
object  seen  has  tangible  distance ;  we  confound  the  strong 
belief  in  the  tangible  distance  of  the  object  with  actual 
sight  of  its  distance. 

10.  Visual    ideas,    therefore,    constitute   a    kind   of 
language,   by   which   we   are   informed   of   the   tactile 
ideas  which  will,  or  may,  arise  in  us. 

Taking  these  propositions  into  consideration  seriatim, 
it  may  be  assumed  that  everyone  will  assent  to  the  first 
and  second ;  and  that  for  the  third  and  fourth  we  have 
only  to  include  the  muscular  sense  under  the  name  of 
sense  of  touch,  as  Berkeley  did,  in  order  to  make  it  quite 
accurate.  Nor  is  it  intelligible  to  me  that  anyone  should 
explicitly  deny  the  truth  of  the  fifth  proposition,  though 
some  of  Berkeley's  supporters,  less  careful  than  himself, 
have  done  so.  Indeed,  it  must  be  confessed  that  it  is 


308  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [sn. 

only  grudgingly,  and  as  it  were  against  his  will,  that 
Berkeley  admits  that  we  obtain  ideas  of  extension, 
figure,  and  magnitude  by  pure  vision,  and  that  he 
more  than  half  retracts  the  admission ;  while  he  abso- 
lutely denies  that  sight  gives  us  any  notion  of  outness 
in  either  sense  of  the  word,  and  even  declares  that  "no 
proper  visual  idea  appears  to  be  without  the  mind,  or  at 
any  distance  off."  By  "proper  visual  ideas,"  Berkeley 
denotes  colours,  and  light,  and  shade  ;  and,  therefore,  he 
affirms  that  colours  do  not  appear  to  be  at  any  distance 
from  us.  I  confess  that  this  assertion  appears  to  me  to 
be  utterly  unaccountable.  I  have  made  endless  experi- 
ments on  this  point,  and  by  no  eifort  of  the  imagination 
can  I  persuade  myself,  when  looking  at  a  colour,  that 
the  colour  is  in  my  mind,  and  not  at  a  "  distance  off/' 
though  of  course  I  know  perfectly  well,  as  a  matter  of 
reason,  that  colour  is  subjective.  It  is  like  looking  at  the 
sun  setting,  and  trying  to  persuade  oneself  that  the  earth 
appears  to  move  and  not  the  sun,  a  feat  I  have  never 
been  able  to  accomplish.  Even  when  the  eyes  are  shut, 
the  darkness  of  which  one  is  conscious,  carries  with  it 
the  notion  of  outness.  One  looks,  so  to  speak,  into  a 
dark  space.  Common  language  expresses  the  common 
experience  of  mankind  in  this  matter.  A  man  will  say 
that  a  smell  is  in  his  nose,  a  taste  in  his  mouth,  a  singing 
in  his  ears,  a  creeping  or  a  warmth  in  his  skin ;  but  if  he 
is  jaundiced,  he  does  not  say  that  he  has  yellow  in  his 
eyes,  but  that  everything  looks  yellow;  and  if  he  is 
troubled  with  muscce  volitantes,  he  says,  not  that  he  has 
specks  in  his  eyes,  but  that  he  sees  specks  dancing  before 
his  eyes.  In  fact,  it  appears  to  me  that  it  is  the  special 
peculiarity  of  visual  sensations,  that  they  invariably  give 
rise  to  the  idea  of  remoteness,  and  that  Berkeley's  dictum 
ought  to  be  reversed.  For  I  think  that  anyone  who 
interrogates  his  consciousness  carefully  will  find  that 


xii.]  THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  SENSATION.  309 

"every  proper  visual  idea  "appears  to  be  without  the 
in i nd  and  at  a  distance  off. 

Not  only  does  every  visibile  appear  to  be  remote,  but 
it  lias  a  position  in  external  space,  just  as  a  tangibile 
appears  to  be  superficial  and  to  have  a  determinate 
position  on  the  surface  of  the  body.  Every  visibile,  in 
fact,  appears  (approximately)  to  be  situated  upon  a  line 
drawn  from  it  to  the  point  of  the  retina  on  which  its 
image  falls.  It  is  referred  outwards,  in  the  general 
direction  of  the  pencil  of  light  by  which  it  is  rendered 
visible,  just  as,  in  the  experiment  with  the  stick,  the 
tangibile  is  referred  outwards  to  the  end  of  the  stick. 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  an  object,  viewed  with  both 
eyes,  is  seen  single  and  not  double.  Two  distinct  images 
are  formed,  but  each  image  is  referred  to  that  point  at 
which  the  two  optic  axes  intersect ;  consequently,  the 
two  images  exactly  cover  one  another,  and  appear  as 
completely  one  as  any  other  two  exactly  similar  super- 
imposed images  would  be.  And  it  is  for  the  same  reason, 
that,  if  the  ball  of  the  eye  is  pressed  upon  at  any  point, 
a  spot  of  light  appears  apparently  outside  the  eye,  and 
in  a  region  exactly  opposite  to  that  in  which  the  pressure 
is  made. 

But  while  it  seems  to  me  that  there  is  no  reason  to 
doubt  that  the  extradition  of  sensation  is  more  complete 
in  the  case  of  the  eye  than  in  that  of  the  skin,  and  that 
corporeal  distinctness,  and  hence  space,  are  directly  sug- 
gested by  vision,  it  is  another,  and  a  much  more  difficult 
question,  whether  the  notion  of  geometrical  solidity  is 
attainable  by  pure  vision  ;  that  is  to  say,  by  a  single 
eye,  all  the  parts  of  which  are  immoveable.  However 
this  may  be,  for  an  absolutely  fixed  eye,  I  conceive  there 
can  be  no  doubt  in  the  case  of  an  eye  that  is  moveable 
and  capable  of  adjustment.  For,  with  the  moveable 
eye,  the  muscular  sense  comes  into  play  in  exactly  the 


310  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [xn. 

same  way  as  with  the  moveable  hand ;  and  the  notion 
of  change  of  place,  plus  the  sense  of  effort,  gives  rise  to  a 
conception  of  visual  space,  which  runs  exactly  parallel 
with  that  of  tangible  space.  "When  two  moveable  eyes 
are  present,  the  notion  of  space  of  three  dimensions  is 
obtained  in  the  same  way  as  it  is  by  the  two  hands,  but 
with  much  greater  precision. 

And  if,  to  take  a  case  similar  to  one  already  assumed, 
we  suppose  a  man  deprived  of  every  sense  except  vision, 
and  of  all  motion  except  that  of  his  eyes,  it  surely  cannot 
be  doubted  that  he  would  have  a  perfect  conception  of 
space  ;  and  indeed  a  much  more  perfect  conception  than 
he  who  possessed  touch  alone  without  vision.  But  of 
course  our  touchless  man  would  be  devoid  of  any  notion 
of  resistance ;  and  hence  space,  for  him,  would  be  alto- 
gether geometrical  and  devoid  of  body. 

And  here  another  curious  consideration  arises,  what 
likeness,  if  any,  would  there  be  between  the  visual  space 
of  the  one  man,  and  the  tangible  space  of  the  other  ? 

Berkeley,  as  we  have  seen  (in  the  eighth  proposition), 
declares  that  there  is  no  likeness  between  the  ideas  given 
by  sight  and  those  given  by  touch  ;  and  one  cannot  but 
agree  with  him,  so  long  as  the  term  ideas  is  restricted  to 
mere  sensations.  Obviously,  there  is  no  more  likeness 
between  the  feel  of  a  surface  and  the  colour  of  it,  than 
there  is  between  its  colour  and  its  smell.  All  simple 
sensations,  derived  from  different  senses,  are  incommen- 
surable with  one  another,  and  only  gradations  of  their 
own  intensity  are  comparable.  And  thus  so  far  as  the 
primary  facts  of  sensation  go,  visual  figure  and  tactile 
figure,  visual  magnitude  and  tactile  magnitude,  visual 
motion  and  tactile  motion,  are  truly  unlike,  and  have  no 
common  term.  But  when  Berkeley  goes  further  than 
this,  and  declares  that  there  are  no  "  ideas "  common 
to  the  "  ideas  "  of  touch  and  those  of  sight,  it  appears  to 


xii.]  THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  SENSATION.  311 

me  that  he  has  fallen  into  a  great  error,  and  one  which 
is  the  chief  source  of  his  paradoxes  about  geometry. 

Berkeley  in  fact  employs  the  word  "  idea "  in  this 
instance  to  denote  two  totally  different  classes  of  feelings, 
or  states  of  consciousness.  For  these  may  be  divided 
into  two  groups  :  the  primary  feelings,  which  exist  in 
themselves  and  without  relation  to  any  other,  such  as 
pleasure  and  pain,  desire,  and  the  simple  sensations  ob- 
tained through  the  sensory  organs  ;  and  the  secondary 
feelings,  which  express  those  relations  of  primary  feelings 
which  are  perceived  by  the  mind  ;  and  the  existence  of 
which,  therefore,  implies  the  pre-existence  of  at  least  two 
of  the  primary  feelings.  Such  are  likeness  and  unlike- 
ness  in  quality,  quantity,  or  form  ;  succession  and  con- 
temporaneity ;  contiguity  and  distance  ;  cause  and  effect ; 
motion  and  rest. 

Now  it  is  quite  true  that  there  is  no  likeness  between 
the  primary  feelings  which  are  grouped  under  sight  and 
touch ;  but  it  appears  to  me  wholly  untrue,  and  indeed 
absurd,  to  affirm  that  there  is  no  likeness  between  the 
secondary  feelings  which  express  the  relations  of  the 
primary  ones. 

The  relation  of  succession  perceived  between  the  visible 
taps  of  a  hammer,  is,  to  my  mind,  exactly  like  the 
relation  of  succession  between  the  tangible  taps ;  the  un- 
likeness  between  red  and  blue  is  a  mental  phenomenon 
of  the  same  order  as  the  unlikeness  between  rough  and 
smooth.  Two  points  visibly  distant  are  so,  because  one 
or  more  units  of  visible  length  (minima  visibilia)  are 
interposed  between  them ;  and  as  two  points  tangibly 
distant  are  so,  because  one  or  more  units  of  tangible 
length  (minima  tangibilia)  are  interposed  between  them, 
it  is  clear  that  the* notion  of  interposition  of  units  of 
sensibility,  or  minima  sensibilia,  is  an  idea  common  to 
the  two.  And  whether  I  see  a  point  move  across  the 


312  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [xn. 

field  of  vision  towards  another  point,  or  feel  the  like 
motion,  the  idea  of  the  gradual  diminution  of  the  number 
of  sensible  units  between  the  two  points  appears  to  me 
to  be  common  to  both  kinds  of  motion. 

Hence,  I  conceive,  that  though  it  be  true  that  there 
is  no  likeness  between  the  primary  feelings  given  by 
sight  and  those  given  by  touch,  yet  there  is  a  com- 
plete likeness  between  the  secondary  feelings  aroused 
by  each  sense. 

Indeed,  if  it  were  not  so,  how  could  Logic,  which 
deals  with  those  forms  of  thought  which  are  applicable 
to  every  kind  of  subject-matter,  be  possible  ?  How  could 
numerical  proportion  be  as  true  of  visibilia,  as  of  tan- 
gibilia,  unless  there  were  some  ideas  common  to  the 
two  ?  And  to  come  directly  to  the  heart  of  the  matter, 
is  there  any  more  difference  between  the  relations 
between  tangible  sensations  which  we  call  place  and 
direction,  and  those  between  visible  sensations  which  go 
by  the  same  name,  than  there  is  between  those  relations 
of  tangible  and  visible  sensations  which  we  call  suc- 
cession 1  And  if  there  be  none,  why  is  Geometry  not 
just  as  much  a  matter  of  visibilia  as  of  tangibilia? 

Moreover,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  certain  that  the 
muscular  sense  is  so  closely  connected  with  both  the 
visual  and  the  tactile  senses,  that,  by  the  ordinary  laws 
of  association,  the  ideas  which  it  suggests  must  needs  be 
common  to  both. 

From  what  has  been  said  it  will  follow  that  the  ninth 
proposition  falls  to  the  ground ;  and  that  vision,  combined 
with  the  muscular  sensations  produced  by  the  movement 
of  the  eyes,  gives  us  as  complete  a  notion  of  corporeal 
separation  and  of  distance  in  the  third  dimension  of  space, 
as  touch,  combined  with  the  muscular  sensations  pro- 
duced by  the  movements  of  the  hand,  does.  The  tenth 
proposition  seems  to  contain  a  perfectly  true  statement, 


XIL]  THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  SENSATION.  313 

but  it  is  ooly  half  the  truth.  It  is  no  doubt  true  that 
our  visual  ideas  are  a  kind  of  language  by  which  we  are 
informed  of  the  tactile  ideas  which  may  or  will  arise  in 
us  ;  but  this  is  true,  more  or  less,  of  every  sense  in  re- 
gard to  every  other.  If  I  put  my  hand  in  my  pocket, 
the  tactile  ideas  which  I  receive  prophesy  quite  accu- 
rately what  I  shall  see — whether  a  bunch  of  keys  or 
half-a-crown — when  I  pull  it  out  again  ;  and  the  tactile 
ideas  are,  in  this  case,  the  language  which  informs  me 
of  the  visual  ideas  which  will  arise.  So  with  the  other 
senses  :  olfactory  ideas  tell  me  I  shall  find  the  tactile  and 
visual  phenomena  called  violets,  if  I  look  for  them  ;  taste 
tells  me  that  what  I  am  tasting  will,  if  I  look  at  it,  have 
the  form  of  a  clove ;  and  hearing  warns  me  of  what  I  shall, 
or  may,  see  and  touch  every  minute  of  my  life. 

But  while  the  "New  Theory  of  Vision"  cannot  be 
considered  to  possess  much  value  in  relation  to  the 
immediate  object  its  author  had  in  view,  it  had  a  vastly 
important  influence  in  directing  attention  to  the  real 
complexity  of  many  of  those  phenomena  of  sensation, 
which  appear  at  first  to  be  simple.  And  even  if  Berkeley 
was,  as  I  imagine  he  was,  quite  wrong  in  supposing  that 
we  do  not  see  space,  the  contrary  doctrine  makes  quite 
as  strongly  for  his  general  view,  that  space  can  be  con- 
ceived only  as  something  thought  by  a  mind. 

The  last  of  Locke's  "  primary  qualities  "  which  remain 
to  be  considered  is  mechanical  solidity,  or  impenetrability. 
But  our  conception  of  this  is  derived  from  the  sense  of 
resistance  to  our  own  effort,  or  active  force,  which  we 
meet  with  in  association  with  sundry  tactile  or  visual 
phenomena ;  and,  undoubtedly,  active  force  is  incon- 
ceivable except  as  a  state  of  consciousness.  This  may 
sound  paradoxical ;  but  let  anyone  try  to  realize  what 
he  means  by  the  mutual  attraction  of  two  particles,  and 
I  think  he  will  find,  either,  that  he  conceives  them 


314  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [xn. 

simply  as  moving  towards  one  another  at  a  certain  rate, 
in  which  case  he  only  pictures  motion  to  himself,  and 
leaves  force  aside ;  or,  that  he  conceives  each  particle  to 
be  animated  by  something  like  his  own  volition,  and  to 
be  pulling  as  he  would  pull.  And  I  suppose  that  this 
difficulty  of  thinking  of  force  except  as  something  com- 
parable to  volition,  lies  at  the  bottom  of  Leibnitz's 
doctrine  of  monads,  to  say  nothing  of  Schopenhauer's 
"  Welt  als  Wille  und  Vorstellung ;"  while  the  opposite 
difficulty  of  conceiving  force  to  be  anything  like  volition, 
drives  another  school  of  thinkers  into  the  denial  of  any 
connection,  save  that  of  succession,  between  cause  and 
effect. 

To  sum  up.  If  the  materialist  affirms  that  the 
universe  and  all  its  phenomena  are  resolvable  into 
matter  and  motion,  Berkeley  replies,  True  ;  but  what 
you  call  matter  and  motion  are  known  to  us  only  as 
forms  of  consciousness ;  their  being  is  to  be  conceived 
or  known  ;  and  the  existence  of  a  state  of  conscious- 
ness, apart  from  a  thinking  mind,  is  a  contradiction 
in  terms. 

I  conceive  that  this  reasoning  is  irrefragable.  And 
therefore,  if  I  were  obliged  to  choose  between  absolute 
materialism  and  absolute  idealism,  I  should  feel  com- 
pelled to  accept  the  latter  alternative.  Indeed,  upon 
this  point  Locke  does,  practically,  go  as  far  in  the 
direction  of  idealism  as  Berkeley,  when  he  admits  that 
"  the  simple  ideas  we  receive  from  sensation  and  reflec- 
tion are  the  boundaries  of  our  thoughts,  beyond  which 
the  mind,  whatever  efforts  it  would  make,  is  not  able 
to  advance  one  jot." — Book  II.  chap,  xxiii.  §  29. 

But  Locke  adds,  "  Nor  can  it  make  any  discoveries 
when  it  would  pry  into  the  nature  and  hidden  causes  of 
these  ideas/' 


xii.]  THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  SENSATION.  315 

Now,  from  this  proposition,  the  thorough  materialists 
dissent  as  much,  on  the  one  hand,  as  Berkeley  does,  upon 
the  other  hand. 

The  thorough  materialist  asserts  that  there  is  a  some- 
thing which  he  calls  the  "  substance  "  of  matter ;  that 
this  something  is  the  cause  of  all  phenomena,  whether 
material  or  mental ;  that  it  is  self-existent  and  eternal, 
and  so  forth. 

Berkeley,  on  the  contrary,  asserts  with  equal  confidence 
that  there  is  no  substance  of  matter,  but  only  a  substance 
of  mind,  which  he  terms  spirit ;  that  there  are  two  kinds 
of  spiritual  substance,  the  one  eternal  and  uncreated, 
the  substance  of  the  Deity,  the  other  created,  and,  once 
created,  naturally  eternal ;  that  the  universe,  as  known  to 
created  spirits,  has  no  being  in  itself,  but  is  the  result  of 
the  action  of  the  substance  of  the  Deity  on  the  substance 
of  those  spirits. 

In  contradiction  to  which  bold  assertion,  Locke  affirms 
that  we  simply  know  nothing  about  substance  of  any 
kind.1 

"  So  that  if  anyone  will  examine  himself  concerning  his  notion  of 
pure  substance  in  general,  he  will  find  lie  has  no  other  idea  of  it  at  all, 
but  only  a  supposition  of  he  knows  not  what  support  of  such  qualities, 
which  are  capable  of  producing  simple  ideas  in  us,  which,  qualities  are 
commonly  called  accidents. 

"  If  anyone  should  be  asked,  what  is  the  subject  wherein  colour  or 
weight  inheres  ]  he  would  have  nothing  to  say  but  the  solid  extended 
parts ;  and  if  he  were  demanded  what  is  it  that  solidity  and  extension 
inhere  in  1  he  would  not  be  in  much  better  case  than  the  Indian 
before  mentioned,  who,  urging  that  the  world  was  supported  by  a 
great  elephant,  was  asked  what  the  elephant  rested  on  ?  to  which  his 
answer  was,  a  great  tortoise.  But  being  again  pressed  to  know  what 
gave  support  to  the  broad-backed  tortoise  ?  replied,  something,  he  knew 

1  Berkeley  virtually  makes  the  same  confession  of  ignorance,  when  he  admits 
that  we  can  have  no  idea  or  notion  of  a  spirit  ("  Principles  of  Human  Know- 
ledge," §  138) ;  and  the  way  in  which  he  tries  to  escape  the  consequences  of  this 
admission,  is  a  splendid  example  of  the  floundering  of  a  mired  logician. 


316  CRITIQUES  AND  ADDRESSES.  [xn. 

not  what.  And  thus  here,  as  in  all  other  cases  when  we  use  words 
without  having  clear  and  distinct  ideas,  we  talk  like  children,  who, 
being  questioned  what  such  a  thing  is,  readily  give  this  satisfactory 
answer,  that  it  is  something  ;  which  in  truth  signifies  no  more  when  so 
used,  either  by  children  or  men,  but  that  they  know  not  what,  and 
that  the  thing  they  pretend  to  talk  and  know  of  is  what  they  have  no 
distinct  idea  of  at  all,  and  are,  so,  perfectly  ignorant  of  it  and  in  the 
dark.  The  idea,  then,  we  have,  to  which  we  give  the  general  name 
substance,  being  nothing  but  the  supposed  but  unknown  support 
of  those  qualities  we  find  existing,  which  we  imagine  cannot  exist  sine 
re  substante,  without  something  to  support  them,  we  call  that  support 
substantia,  which,  according  to  the  true  import  of  the  word,  is,  in 
plain  English,  standing  under  or  upholding."1 

I  cannot  but  believe  that  the  judgment  of  Locke  is  that 
which  Philosophy  will  accept  as  her  final  decision. 

Suppose  that  a  piano  were  conscious  of  sound,  and  of 
nothing  else.  It  would  become  acquainted  with  a 
system  of  nature  entirely  composed  of  sounds,  and  the 
laws  of  nature  would  be  the  laws  of  melody  and  of 
harmony.  It  might  acquire  endless  ideas  of  likeness 
and  unlikeness,  of  succession,  of  similarity  and  dissimi- 
larity, but  it  could  attain  to  no  conception  of  space, 
of  distance,  or  of  resistance  ;  or  of  figure,  or  of  motion. 

The  piano  might  then  reason  thus  :  All  my  know- 
ledge consists  of  sounds  and  the  perception  of  the  rela- 
tions of  sounds  ;  now  the  being  of  sound  is  to  be  heard  ; 
and  it  is  inconceivable  that  the  existence  of  the  sounds 
I  know,  should  depend  upon  any  other  existence  than 
that  of  the  mind  of  a  hearing  being. 

This  would  be  quite  as  good  reasoning  as  Berkeley's, 
and  very  sound  and  useful,  so  far  as  it  defines  the  limits 
of  the  piano's  faculties.  But  for  all  that,  pianos  have 
an  existence  quite  apart  from  sounds,  and  the  auditory 
consciousness  of  our  speculative  piano  would  be  depen- 
dent, in  the  first  place,  on  the  existence  of  a  "  substance  " 
of  brass,  wood,  and  iron,  and,  in  the  second,  on  that  of  a 

1  Locke,  "  Human  Understanding,"  Book  II.  chap,  xiiii.  §  2. 


xii.]  THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  SENSATION.  317 

musician.  But  of  neither  of  these  conditions  of  the 
existence  of  his  consciousness  would  the  phenomena  of 
that  consciousness  afford  him  the  slightest  hint. 

So  that  while  it  is  the  summit  of  human  wisdom  to 
learn  the  limit  of  our  faculties,  it  may  be  wise  to  recol- 
lect that  we  have  no  more  right  to  make  denials,  than  to 
put  forth  affirmatives,  about  what  lies  beyond  that  limit. 
Whether  either  mind,  or  matter,  has  a  "  substance  "  or 
not,  is  a  problem  which  we  are  incompetent  to  discuss ; 
and  it  is  just  as  likely  that  the  common  notions  upon 
the  subject  should  be  correct  as  any  others.  Indeed, 
Berkeley  himself  makes  Philonous  wind  up  his  discus- 
sions with  Hylas,  in  a  couple  of  sentences  which  aptly 
express  this  conclusion  : — 

"  You  see,  Hylas,  the  water  of  yonder  fountain,  how  it  is  forced 
upwards  in  a  round  column  to  a  certain  height,  at  which  it  breaks 
and  falls  back  into  the  basin  from  whence  it  rose ;  its  ascent  as  well 
as  its  descent  proceeding  from  the  same  uniform  law  or  principle 
of  gravitation.  Just  so,  the  same  principles  which,  at  first  view,  lead 
to  scepticism,  pursued  to  a  certain  point,  bring  men  back  to  common 


THE   END. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
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RKC'D  LH 

AUG    9' 


fitC.  CIB    m 


BEC. 


CIR.  HW12:181 


ilHSC   MAY  1   I  1991 


i_U> 

SAPR 

MM  iJth'T. 

191967  26 

NOVO 

31991 

l'*t 

fiOlli  DISC  NOV 

1  0  1991 

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CD.  0"l|o 


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University  of  California 

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